A winning combination of sisterhood, school, and a spooky doll.
A doll’s head mysteriously helps two sisters deal with their school bullies—until its evilness becomes uncontrollable.
Lucy and her younger sister, Antonia, live in a trailer with their waitress mom, which leads mean girls at their middle school to taunt Lucy with the nickname Trash Licker. Lucy tries to keep her head down and stay quiet, but Antonia is different. When the pair find an old doll’s head by the river, Antonia demands to keep it. She names it Hush-a-bye, talks to it, and tells Lucy that it talks back. Wary at first, Lucy begins to believe after impossible things happen to those who have wronged the sisters, and Antonia says that the doll is responsible. However, Lucy soon realizes that Hush-a-bye has its own desires and will stop at nothing to get what it wants, no matter who gets hurt in the process. Creepy dolls are a horror staple, and Hush-a-bye fits right in. The full extent of her scariness is only exposed in the climactic finale; before that point, Lucy and Antonia’s realistic sibling relationship propels the story, and it’s the everyday cruelty of other kids that is most frightening. An abusive absent father is mentioned but doesn’t play any substantial role, so this element feels underexplored. Main characters are cued as White; Lucy’s favorite teacher is a gay man, and Antonia is possibly neurodiverse.
A winning combination of sisterhood, school, and a spooky doll. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20678-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic.
A loyal black kitten’s boy is under supernatural attack.
Eleven-month-old Nimbus loves Fletcher, the boy who nursed her back to health following life-threatening injuries. When Fletcher becomes curious about a strange jar and opens it, releasing a terrible goblin, loyal Nim protects Fletcher, taking heavy damage in the process. But Fletcher’s aunt, who’s caring for him over spring break, believes Nim attacked Fletcher and dumps her far from home. Rhett, a stylish rat with star quality, befriends injured Nim and leads her to a witch’s house. While the witch cares for Nim, the witch’s cats (maternal Fern, bookish Rochester, standoffish Bianca, and openly hostile Abraxas) teach Nim important cat skills. She also discovers she has a supernatural ability: In destroying one eye of the nightmare demon in the fight to protect Fletcher, Nim gained its “dream sight.” But she also learns it might come back for Fletcher, who no longer has Nim to protect him, posing a time-sensitive, high-stakes threat. Even though the witch’s home is nice and magic itself seems to be telling her to stay put, Nim wants to find a way back to Fletcher. As a hero, Nimbus is as gritty and determined as she is adorable. Tear-jerker moments explore pet abandonment—readers may want their own pets on hand to hug—all the way through the magical, action-packed finale. Fletcher and the witch read white.
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780062680372
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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