A hilarious, heartwarming middle school drama.
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Seventh grader Emmy Woods is a lot of things. Consummate schemer. Aspiring app developer. Risk taker. And where her best friend, Harper, is concerned, she’s “Emerie Woods: Love Coordinator.” But a matchmaking attempt goes horribly wrong, and Emmy knows exactly who to blame: boys, “humanity’s greatest unsolved mystery.” When she wakes up one morning with a new app on her phone that translates the hitherto-hidden thoughts of boys, she thinks she’s hit the jackpot and starts making matches left and right. But when the secret of the app falls into the wrong hands, Emmy must face the consequences of meddling in others’ love lives. Emmy is a lively, engaging narrator, and even the most minor characters are richly imbued with distinctive quirks, desires, and traumas. Brody expertly teases romances, fractured friendships, and plot twists, keeping readers guessing at every turn. Echoes of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which the language arts class is reading, provide added spice. Emmy is White, and there is some diversity in the supporting cast. In a jarring note seemingly equating Whiteness with being American, the book states that Harper’s black hair is from her Korean-born father, but she got “her hazel eyes and fair complexion from her mom, who was born right here in Highbury.”
A hilarious, heartwarming middle school drama. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-17368-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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