In the end, it’s more liberating than oppressive, with bits of humor and a jubilant pageant takeover by beauty rebels to...
In a small Texas town, a confident fat girl confronts new challenges to her self-esteem.
At age 16, Willowdean—her mother calls her Dumplin’—has a good sense of herself. She’s uninterested in Mom’s raison d’être, the Clover City Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant, which annually takes over the town and Will’s own house. Mom won once and now runs the pageant, dieting to fit her old dress and pressuring Will to diet too. Will doesn’t. She mourns her beloved aunt Lucy, a second parent to her who died six months ago, and simmers with pleasure over a new, hot, sort-of-boyfriend. However, his touch makes Will panic with newfound insecurity. She loses him, loses her old best friend, gains new social-outsider buddies (a familiar trope)—and finds triumph somewhere amid Dolly Parton, drag queens, breaking pageant rules, and repairing relationships. The text refreshingly asserts that thinness is no requirement for doing and deserving good things, that weight loss isn’t a cure-all, and that dieting doesn’t work anyway. The plot arc, amazingly, avoids the all-too-common pitfall of having its fat protagonist lose weight. Unfortunately, Murphy loses her step and undermines her main point in the mournful, cringeworthy details of Lucy’s death and life, which are blamed on extreme fatness rather than unfairness.
In the end, it’s more liberating than oppressive, with bits of humor and a jubilant pageant takeover by beauty rebels to crown this unusual book about a fat character. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-232718-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A little violent, a little supernatural, a little mysterious, a lot sentimental; fans of the trilogy won't be disappointed...
A trilogy that began in the recognizable present concludes in a post-apocalyptic dystopic England, 17 years from now.
Adam—the child conceived in tragedy in Numbers (2010)—is a father now himself, caretaker to his girlfriend Sarah's daughter Mia. Like so many other former Londoners, this young family lives in the woods, surviving by hunting after the devastating earthquake that destroyed their society. But Adam is different from everyone else in this ravaged England, because he's the wild-eyed prophet who predicted the Chaos. Adam sees the potential death date of everyone he looks at, a curse that makes him valuable to dangerous people. When a paramilitary group kidnaps Mia, Adam has no choice but to put himself in their hands. In alternating chapters, Sarah and Adam describe their experiences, first in the woods and then with their tormentors. Whom can they trust? What is the extent of Adam's power—and perhaps of Mia's? The post-apocalyptic setting has limited realism (with England's woods thick enough to support many surviving Londoners on a diet of venison), and Mia's little-girl babble tends toward the twee.
A little violent, a little supernatural, a little mysterious, a lot sentimental; fans of the trilogy won't be disappointed as this story edges toward magical thriller . (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-35092-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A quick read with some interesting fantasy elements, but the passive heroine and sometimes-confusing worldbuilding...
Brianna Paxton has always suspected she is invisible to boys.
It turns out there's a supernatural explanation: A silver bracelet her grandmother gave her keeps Brianna from revealing herself as an uber-desirable and uber-dangerous bandia. According to Blake, the boy who takes it upon himself to educate her about her powers, Brianna is the descendant of Danu, a goddess who punished Killian, the one man she couldn't make love her, with a curse. Now Brianna is embroiled in a cosmic war against the Sons of Killian, an order meant to extinguish the descendants of Danu. (Unsettlingly, the Sons perpetuate themselves through “selective breeding” and seek out high school girls to date based on their gene pool.) To complicate matters, Brianna and Blake share a kiss that forges a magical bond between them, and Blake spends the novel torn between his desire for Brianna and his distrust of her powers. Despite Brianna's supernatural abilities, she is more often passive than active. Others teach her about her powers and history without being asked; she is attacked but rarely goes on the offensive; and romantically, she mostly waits around for Blake to make up his mind.
A quick read with some interesting fantasy elements, but the passive heroine and sometimes-confusing worldbuilding disappoint. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7387-3303-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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