Smart, insightful, poignant—leavening brutal, middle school realities with wry humor.
An inventive seventh grade fixer discovers the downside of solving others’ problems.
Since their mother left their family, over a year ago, narrator Gladys, 12, and her sisters—popular Mabel, 16, and brainy Agnes, 9—have longed for her return. Their hardworking lawyer dad can’t replace what’s missing. Glad discovered her problem-solving skills three years earlier, when their mom needed an excuse for forgetting Agnes at school. Now, Glad regularly finds excuses for Mabel and provides desperate classmates with cover stories. She helps one sustain belief in a fictitious Canadian boyfriend; makes up excuses for another to miss band practice; and assists a third in shedding the girly school apparel her grandma insists on for the T-shirts and jeans she prefers. Trustworthy, dependable Glad never extracts payment for her efforts. A few friends would be nice, yet popularity eludes her. Her only lunch-table companion remains grade-skipping “Harry Homework,” 10, who assists classmates with homework (André, the Anti-Bullying Aardvark notwithstanding) to avoid harassment. As Glad is asked to invent more-complicated fixes, school administrators are becoming suspicious. Planning for Mom’s promised visit presents another challenge: keeping Dad from dating until then. Ably assisted by a diverse cast of characters, Glad (who, like her family, is white) discovers that learning how to solve one's own problems is necessary to avoid making them again.
Smart, insightful, poignant—leavening brutal, middle school realities with wry humor. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-30810-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Brava!
From award winner Telgemeier (Smile, 2010), a pitch-perfect graphic novel portrayal of a middle school musical, adroitly capturing the drama both on and offstage.
Seventh-grader Callie Marin is over-the-moon to be on stage crew again this year for Eucalyptus Middle School’s production of Moon over Mississippi. Callie's just getting over popular baseball jock and eighth-grader Greg, who crushed her when he left Callie to return to his girlfriend, Bonnie, the stuck-up star of the play. Callie's healing heart is quickly captured by Justin and Jesse Mendocino, the two very cute twins who are working on the play with her. Equally determined to make the best sets possible with a shoestring budget and to get one of the Mendocino boys to notice her, the immensely likable Callie will find this to be an extremely drama-filled experience indeed. The palpably engaging and whip-smart characterization ensures that the charisma and camaraderie run high among those working on the production. When Greg snubs Callie in the halls and misses her reference to Guys and Dolls, one of her friends assuredly tells her, "Don't worry, Cal. We’re the cool kids….He's the dork." With the clear, stylish art, the strongly appealing characters and just the right pinch of drama, this book will undoubtedly make readers stand up and cheer.
Brava! (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-32698-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
SEEN & HEARD
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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