Character-driven, thought-provoking, often funny, and, above all, timely.
Heather Sorensen rose from poverty to lead a major menstrual products company, but she’s MIA when her daughter gets her first period.
Eden, 13, was fulfilling Heather’s lofty dream for her future—Olympic medal–winning gymnast—until a growth spurt and injury cut it short. Though less invested in her divorced mother’s ambitions, Eden feels lost: Gymnastics always came first, leaving little time for friends. She rarely sees her pilot dad and is often alone in the enormous Seattle-area mansion she shares with Heather, whose high-profile career trumps parenting. Heather’s appearance at a career day assembly to extol her company, MySecret, leaves Eden feeling humiliated and a target for teasing. After she defends herself against a harassing boy with help from classmate Maribel, both girls are suspended. With Heather unreachable, Maribel’s mom brings them to the food pantry she manages, where Eden starts her period. Maribel’s Guatemalan immigrant family take to Eden, as do their friends Will, a trans boy, and his mom, Raven (who are White, like Eden). Raven’s small nonprofit makes and distributes free, reusable cloth menstrual pads. Learning about period poverty (and poverty, period), Eden ponders ways to fund period products and gets a crash course in income inequality, but her commitment to social justice strains her relationship with Heather. Readers learn about these subjects alongside Eden in a well-integrated way and will root for the quirky, well-rounded characters who challenge outdated cultural taboos.
Character-driven, thought-provoking, often funny, and, above all, timely. (author’s note, glossary, resources) (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781534496262
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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 TO SCREEN
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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