Domestic kerfuffles weathered by plenty of love and sweet cajeta.
Growing pains afflict a prospective blended family when matriarch Tía Enriqueta announces that she won’t be attending the wedding.
Twins Raquel and Lucinda Mendoza and their soon-to-be stepsister, Juliette Viramontes, got past some rough patches in The Do-Over (2022), but several remain to be navigated in this sequel—particularly after Marcos and Sylvia, their respective parents, decide to move the wedding to the Viramontes family’s ancestral ranch in Mexico and Sylvia’s Tía Enriqueta digs in her heels, claiming that it’s all happening too quickly. How to, as the title frames it, win her over? Though mostly focusing on the family issue, Torres tucks new cousins and other relatives, cute goats to milk, a hidden treehouse, an old diary, and even a couple of secret passages into a fluid narrative inflected by the language, foods, and values of its Latine cast. The younger set gets together for delicious adventures in the kitchen as they concoct obleas, caramel sweets inspired by a secret family recipe. Meanwhile, Raquel and Enriqueta bond in mutual recognition that both are batalladora—tough. This bonding ultimately leads to a properly festive ceremony…and life-altering decisions for the three seventh graders as well. Torres again tells a warmhearted tale in which personalities clash and mesh on the way to a loving resolution.
Domestic kerfuffles weathered by plenty of love and sweet cajeta. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781338818901
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
An insightful, action-packed, and thought-provoking adventure.
In a dystopian future ravaged by climate change, a 12-year-old tech genius must save her community from an evil government.
Raised on her family’s strawberry farm in the Valley, Yolanda Cicerón, who has Cuban roots, aspires to become a neurolink surgeon, install computer chips in human skulls, and live in Silo, the most developed city around. But Camila, Yoly’s older sister and her guardian since their parents’ exile, can’t afford the tuition. After Yoly secretly accepts a scholarship from Silo’s Mayor Blackburn to fund her studies—against Cami’s explicit wishes—she realizes the scholarship’s terms require her to go on Retreat, a life-threatening mission in territory plagued by extreme weather disasters. Terrified, Cami finally shares secret family history that explains her mistrust of the mayor. Yoly belatedly understands that the System that purportedly keeps everyone safe from nature is actually oppressive and is spying on them. Looking for a way to pay off the scholarship and avoid the Retreat, Yoly and Cami discover a honeybee colony on their farm and recognize that the bees can pollinate fields and thereby reduce people’s dependence on Silo. But questioning and innovation are dangerous under an authoritarian regime, and when people dear to Yoly are taken away, she must fight to save them and bring down the whole corrupt System. Readers will root for Yoly, who is as kind and brave as she is smart, in this page-turning story that deals with all-too-relevant themes.
An insightful, action-packed, and thought-provoking adventure. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-300655-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Quirky and smart.
Is going back in time about changing outcomes or changing perspective? McKinley’s going to find out.
Sixth grader McKinley is excited about Time Hop, her town’s annual history celebration, which this time is celebrating the year 1993. In 1993, her father was also a sixth grader—and at the same school where the event is held. Taught to sew by her Grandma Bev, a talented seamstress even after suffering a stroke in 1993 that affected her speech and left half her body paralyzed, McKinley creates a fabulously retro outfit for the fashion show. But on the big day, her single father needs to work, and he asks McKinley to stay home to give Grandma Bev her medications. Instead, she decides to bring her grandma to the Time Hop, but it’s a disaster. McKinley has a fight with her best friend, then her father shows up and orders her off the runway. McKinley runs away—and right back in time to 1993. The third-person voice is bright and energetic, while vivid descriptions capture the cast of predominantly White characters as their present and past selves. McKinley is especially endearing, ringing true as a confused, creative, well-meaning tween who realizes she may have been sent back in time to solve a problem—but which one? Or is this journey all about gaining insight so she can better handle her life? The philosophical questions are delivered with a light touch.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781524738624
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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