Entertainment for the fashionista crowd.
Almost-15-year-old Harper thinks only of fashion until her dad sees her credit-card bill and packs her off to summer camp for a needed lifestyle change.
As the daughter of a suddenly rich music-video producer, Harper spends money without thought. She had expected to spend the summer in Cancun but instead finds herself in a creaky wooden cabin with fellow campers who don’t seem to like her much. No wonder, as Harper has carted in luggage full of hair products, expensive T-shirts and impractical shoes. She begins by losing a contest her cabin should have won, blowing out the fuses and using up all the hot water. She’s terrified of imaginary spiders and bears and remains resolutely nonathletic. One sympathetic girl, Lina, tries to help, but when Harper finally goes too far, even Lina quits talking to her. Desperate to gain friends, Harper plots to win a contest to get a popular rock star to shoot a video at the camp—a girl Harper secretly actually knows. Calonita keeps the narration bubbly and pitched just right for her pre- and early-teen audience, with plenty of comedy and a gentle message about superficiality. She makes Harper the butt of the jokes but always shows the girl’s sympathetic side so that readers can laugh with her rather than at her.
Entertainment for the fashionista crowd. (Chick lit. 10-15)Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-09115-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Poppy/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Eunice Williams lives the strictly controlled life of a seven-year-old Puritan child in 1704 Deerfield, in colonial Massachusetts. In a raid by the Canienga (or Macqua, or Mohawk), her entire community is kidnapped and dispersed, and Eunice eventually finds herself in a new culture, with a new family. Following her over the course of years, readers experience her acculturation with her new family, slowly learn along with her of the history and politics among the English, French and the Haudenosaunee League and witness Eunice’s transformation into a teenager who makes an ultimate choice to identify herself and thereby choose a people. First-time novelist Steinmetz indicates in her author’s note that this is a work of fiction based on actual events and that her depiction of the Canienga culture “can be only approximate” (the sources she identifies are observations from outside of the culture, and she acknowledges their limitations). As such, her leisurely paced narrative with its poetic attention to detail and insight into character may serve interested readers with a more contemporary and respectful perspective than older “Indian Captive” stories. (Historical fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59643-290-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
Heavy for its small size but light as a feather in content, this vade mecum for the newly necrotic fills garishly hued pages of coated stock with advice and superficial “information” about zombie varieties, makeup and fashion wear; zombie friends and predators; “zombielicious” party food, rock bands, reading matter, board and video games and more. Written in digestible blocks over generic but blood-spattered, heavily manipulated photomontages, the narrative goes down like freshly scooped entrails, thanks to its chatty tone and upbeat sentiments like, “With proper care any zombie can have a long, fulfilling reanimation,” and “Nothing can stand in your way when you’re comfortable in your own (rotting) skin.” Compared to vampires and werewolves, zombies don’t get their fair share of undead love outside of a handful of classic films; for partly decomposed—or still-breathing zombie wannabes—this is a shamble in the right direction. (index) (Faux-nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4934-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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