A poignant coming-of-age tale with a compelling mystery at its center.
In this debut middle-grade novel, a girl whose mother has left her makes a life-changing new friend.
It’s nearly a year since Melanie Harper’s mother disappeared. With her father, Melanie moved from Grayson to Fairview, where, in 1980, she’s now in the fifth grade at Buckminster Experimental School. She doesn’t fit in with most other kids and is a target for mean girls like Karen Wagner, who’s always trying to get a look at Melanie’s secret journal. Melanie’s artist father is preoccupied with his work, and she’s often lonely. Things change when a new girl suddenly appears in Melanie’s life. She asks Melanie to call her Sabrina, after the character Sabrina Duncan on Charlie’s Angels. Sabrina is “just about the ideal friend,” and through her encouragement, Melanie gains more social confidence. She stands up to Karen and begins a tentative friendship with Leanne, a girl in the bully’s circle who admires her: “You are different, but you’re just like yourself, when everyone is trying not to be.” Melanie even wins the role of Peter Pan in the school play, hoping that her mother—to whom she’s been sending coded postcards—will attend. When Karen gets hold of the secret journal, things fall apart, bringing Melanie to important new realizations. In her novel, Mathison provides an appealing hero who’s thoughtful, perceptive, and richly imaginative, able to perceive what others don’t: “There’s a door in the world, right there for anyone to see...standing open the whole time and a lifetime of mystery beyond.” Melanie’s emotions are affecting and compassionately described but not histrionic. The secret of her mother’s disappearance—and Sabrina’s arrival—embodies a creative psychological response to sorrow that provides surprises, though some readers may guess them before the end.
A poignant coming-of-age tale with a compelling mystery at its center.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73500-372-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Starr Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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