Still, a valiant effort that wrestles with important, complex themes.
A preteen Mexican-American girl gains a locally famous white woman as her mentor—but feels like she’s losing her identity.
Jacinta Juárez is struggling with the absence of her mother when she meets newscaster Kathryn Dawson Dahl, whom Jacinta calls “Miss,” and decides the journalist will be her mentor no matter what. Jacinta has no qualms manipulating the people and situations around her to reach her goal, making her a difficult protagonist to sympathize with. While Jacinta and Miss’ relationship is anything but sweet, Miss offers an escape from stifling responsibilities and new experiences: Jacinta takes gymnastics lessons, French class, and attends the ballet. But as the once-naïve Jacinta’s world expands, so does her confusion about where she belongs. When her undocumented parents are threatened, Jacinta looks to Miss for help but finds her new experiences have given her new confidence to face challenges. Sometimes Jacinta’s ignorance makes sense given her situation, but at other times it feels forced. More distressing, however, are statements like, “I realized power doesn’t come from your job or the color of your skin. Real power comes from inside. It’s not something that someone can give you. And it’s not something that anyone can take away,” which paint a positive veneer on difficult, complex issues without simple fixes.
Still, a valiant effort that wrestles with important, complex themes. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7235-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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