Though unrealistically pat in the end, it offers a positive message that in life, good and bad come together.
What is luck? Is it something that happens to you, or is it perhaps everything that happens to you? Emma Macintyre will have to figure that out.
As the story opens, an unsigned letter instructs Emma to write a list of 10 lucky things she wants to have happen and to check her list at month’s end to see what her good luck has brought her. Emma is not having a good eighth-grade year. Aunt Jenny—who wasn’t really her aunt but her single mom’s best friend—died six weeks ago, leaving a big hole in their lives. And her best friend, Savvy, got a new phone and is now more interested in texting, Instagramming, Snapchatting, and trying to fit in with the popular kids than in hanging out with Emma. As the month progresses, good things happen to her: She lands the lead part in the school play, falls in love (though not with the boy on her list, who turns out to be a creep); but bad things also happen: Savvy unwisely sends a topless photo of herself to a boy. In the devastating aftermath, Savvy’s moms withdraw her from school. Emma narrates, a convincing young adolescent whose close relationship with her mother is forged in part by their mutual suffering at the hands of her alcoholic WASP grandmother, who comments on the biracial girl’s “dusky coloring,” inherited from her absent Colombian dad. The savagery of middle school social dynamics will resonate.
Though unrealistically pat in the end, it offers a positive message that in life, good and bad come together. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30652-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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