After successfully establishing their party-planning venture, (You’re Invited, 2015) the four friends behind RSVP feel ready to handle their first wedding.
However, seventh-graders Sadie, Lauren, Becca, and Vi soon encounter a raft of obstacles, both collectively and individually, as they work to arrange the wedding of an outrageously demanding bride-to-be. Each girl narrates the tale from her individual perspective in alternating chapters that begin with snippets reflecting the girls’ personalities: Sadie’s to-do lists, Lauren’s vocabulary words, Vi’s recipes, and Becca’s horoscopes. Malone and Nall explore topics such as complicated parent-child dynamics, mean girls, new crushes, first kisses, and the pressures to be a perfect student. Amid the flurry, Sadie frets about her mother, Lauren’s plans to schedule mandatory fun time go awry, the new boy in town captures the effervescent Becca's interest, and Vi contents with the continual taunts of Linney. An impending hurricane and the resulting evacuation to their middle school provide the catalyst for the girls to resolve their concerns. Throughout the tale, the authors highlight the loyal, genuine friendship the girls share. As the quartet endure the bride-to-be’s antics, wild weather, and life dilemmas, they gain a renewed appreciation of their friendship, recognizing that they can rely upon each other to weather life’s upheavals.
In this lively sequel, both fans and readers new to the story can enjoy the enterprising endeavors of these steadfast friends. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3200-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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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. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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