An adolescent’s struggle with identity makes for a smart, fascinating read.
In Swanson’s middle-grade novel, a young girl in 1970s Michigan harbors a quiet desire to be a boy.
Nine-year-old Jess Jezowski, living with a family of six, strives to be the “easiest” child for her mother. She learns in her Catholic church that asking for forgiveness washes away sins, and that if she sins too often, she may forget a few of them. Jess feels she has a boy inside her who’s itching to get out, but her mother practically forces her to wear dresses (at least sometimes) and keep her hair long. Jess rarely complains, but she’d much rather be out playing sports and speaking her mind, like the boys who seemingly get away with everything. When she gets a doll for Christmas, she cuts its hair, names it Mickey, and gives it a voice, creating a male alter ego that’s somehow both liberating and another way to hide her true self. Jess is determined to show everyone who sees her as a “meek and mild” girl that she’s audacious, just like Mickey. This story, based on Swanson’s own childhood experiences, hits on a number of topical concerns. Jess, like many kids, feels obligated to suppress her true self. She watches society designate females as the weaker gender; women athletes aren’t taken seriously, and “man enough” is an expression of strength. Jess’ life is rife with problems—she, her mother, and her siblings must endure the vicissitudes of her father, whose mood can easily swing into anger and unsettle the entire household. The narrative, which spans less than a year, vividly depicts its setting and era, evoking a snowy winter and a blisteringly hot summer as President Nixon and the ongoing Watergate scandal dominate the news. Simple black-and-white illustrations often preface the chapters and range from boldly depicted images to rough sketches.
An adolescent’s struggle with identity makes for a smart, fascinating read.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781684633302
Page Count: 376
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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