Equal parts silly and endearing, this one will appeal to fans of Wendy Mass and Megan McDonald. (Fiction. 8-12)
A fantastical and funny story features the unlikeliest of friends.
Thirteen-year-old math genius Aphrodite Wigglebottom believes that anyone can be a math whiz. She sets out to prove her theory by teaching an eighth-grade remedial math class. The students initially reject their teenage teacher, but Aphrodite slowly wins them over, both by knowing her stuff and by her willingness to use whatever means necessary to get her students’ attention, including literally gluing them into their desks. She even convinces them to compete in a math contest against the smartest kids in school. Aphrodite might know an awful lot of math, but she soon discovers that there is a lot about being 13 that she doesn’t know. Enter Mindy Loft, terrible at math but an expert at makeovers, baton twirling and, well, at being 13. The two girls narrate in alternating chapters, telling a lighthearted, funny and often bizarre saga of middle-school mayhem. Underneath the drama, though, is a gentle, uplifting message: Even though we can’t explain how or why some friendships form, the best of them help us to understand ourselves and change us in fundamental ways.
Equal parts silly and endearing, this one will appeal to fans of Wendy Mass and Megan McDonald. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-525-42333-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Cleverly structured and sweetly engaging.
A 13-year-old embarks on a cross-country road trip with his famous grandfather.
Grief-stricken middle schooler Gonzalo Alberto Sánchez García’s summer is off to a rocky start. He feels like he’s in a fog, he can’t stop drawing monsters against photos of landscapes on his iPad, and he’s stuck visiting his cranky, standoffish abuelo in Mendocino, California. Gonzalo’s Cuban grandfather is the renowned but reclusive fantasy author behind a “billion-dollar book-and-movie franchise” run by Gonzalo’s mother. Though generally reluctant to promote his work, Abuelo agrees to a tour for the release of the last book in the bestselling series. But he turns the tour into a journey to visit old friends and share his own wounds with Gonzalo in an attempt to help them both heal from the traumas they’ve suffered. Indeed, Abuelo’s plan proves poignantly effective as both he and Gonzalo slowly open up to each other and to all the joy still to be found in the world around them. Cartaya peppers Gonzalo’s first-person narrative with chapters voiced by an omniscient first-person narrator who breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing readers with plot recaps and commentary. While the narrator’s interruptions risk jarring readers out of the story’s flow, the shifts in perspective are charmingly and humorously executed, may support reading comprehension, and further the overarching bookish themes, since the story both revolves around a fictional book series and follows main character Gonzalo’s transformation into the hero of his own story.
Cleverly structured and sweetly engaging. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780451479754
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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