This entertaining read leaves some provoking questions unanswered—usefully.
Cartoonist Derek grapples with a perplexing association between disability and bullying in this stand-alone sequel to My Life as a Book (2010) and My Life as a Stuntboy (2011).
Derek has two best friends at school and two beloved critters at home, including Frank, a capuchin monkey who’s practicing family life before training as a service animal. Frank’s the model for Derek’s comic, Super Frank. Drawing’s a fun challenge; reading’s a difficult chore, though the stick-figure cartoons with which Derek illustrates his vocabulary words enliven the margins. Each playful sketch portrays a word from the adjacent paragraph but in an amusingly different context—“ingenious” shows up as a cupcake machine. Derek’s life takes a turn for the worse when transfer-student Umberto targets him. Umberto steals Derek’s cartoon ideas and makes him a “verbal punching bag.” The bullying arc is fairly standard, but the bully isn’t, at least physically: Umberto uses a wheelchair. On one hand, Tashjian creates a real anti-stereotype in this speedy wheeling boy who could (and would) easily crush Derek with a lacrosse stick if teachers weren’t around. However, after the boys bond, Derek’s funny narrative voice (“Frank’s fur is now covered in a helmet of peanut butter”) indulges in a few adult-sounding, rose-colored disability clichés, saying that Umberto possesses “honesty and grace” and “inspires me.”
This entertaining read leaves some provoking questions unanswered—usefully. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9609-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A richly atmospheric page-turner—readers will eagerly anticipate the forthcoming sequel.
Young Seren Rhys stands on the cusp of a new life. Unfortunately for her, the train to her new life is late.
Following the death of her aunt, who saved her from her 12-year stay at the orphanage, she receives word that her godfather, Capt. Arthur Jones, will take her in. Seren spends her wait dreaming of the Jones family and their surely bustling, welcoming manor, Plas-y-Fran in Wales. An encounter with a mysterious man and his more mysterious wrapped parcel (containing the eponymous mechanical bird) leaves Seren reeling, and the mysteries multiply when she arrives at Plas-y-Fran. The place is shuttered and cold, nearly deserted but for a few fearful, oppressively unforthcoming servants. The captain and his wife are away; of their young son, Tomos, there is neither sign nor sound. With the Crow as her only, if reluctant, ally, Seren soon finds herself enmeshed in mayhem and magic that may prove lethal. In her characteristic style, Fisher crafts an elaborate fantasy from deceptively simple language. Seren is a sharp, saucy narrator whose constant puzzlement at others’ consternation over her impertinence provides running amusement. Supporting characters are fascinating if ambiguous players, not so much poorly drawn as poorly revealed, perhaps casualties of the quick pace. The deadened manor, however, provides the perfect backdrop for preternatural forces. Characters are presumed white.
A richly atmospheric page-turner—readers will eagerly anticipate the forthcoming sequel. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1491-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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