Humorous and heartfelt
Operating under the premise that by high school, a kid is defined by one word only, 12-year-old Davis O’Brien attempts to find his own adjective before anyone else can give him one.
Davis’ two best friends already have their descriptors. Ellen is the mean one. Sophie is the pretty one. Davis’ worst nightmare is that he will be known not as the nice kid or the smart kid or even the weird kid but as the husky kid. But he soon realizes that there are meaner things than euphemisms for fat when Sophie’s new friends call him a fag. And while Davis obsesses about his hygiene, his music, his family, and his place in the world, his sexual orientation is barely on the horizon. Brooklyn with its diverse population is an evocative backdrop for Davis’ soul-searching. Readers who press through the slow start will be rewarded by genuinely funny observations, heart-wrenching social anguish, and the pull of wanting to belong. This is not at its heart a book about sexuality but about humanity. And while ultimately Davis is given his word, by then he realizes that he is defined by so much more.
Humorous and heartfelt .(Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48413-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
A batten-down-the-hatches thriller anchored by critical real-life themes.
During the pandemic, a teen inadvertently gets caught up in a crime ring in his touristy hometown of Key West.
Fifteen-year-old Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker, after his ancestors who made a living salvaging shipwrecks. He is thriving thanks to the online schooling during lockdown that allows him the flexibility to be out on his boat. The flexibility also helps with his odd job, one that has him working graveyard shifts in an actual graveyard: A British man pays him $50 per week to clean one particular headstone of the accumulated iguana excrement that follows a day of reptilian sunbathing. One night, while he’s at work in the cemetery, Wrecker is approached by a silver-mustachioed man who wants to hire him to keep an eye on a brand-new crypt, but there is something fishy about the situation and intimidating about the man, and soon Wrecker is being coerced into doing things that he is certain are tied to illegal activity. This thrilling story featuring wry, witty writing also explores the history of racism in Key West, the environmental impacts of cruise tourism, and the effects of Covid-19 on both people’s lives and criminal activities. Wrecker is a sympathetic character whose intelligence, savvy, and strong moral compass lead to a satisfying finish. Wrecker is biracial, with Black and white ancestry; most main characters read white.
A batten-down-the-hatches thriller anchored by critical real-life themes. (Thriller. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593376287
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
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