Coming-of-age as a ceremony makes a rewarding frame for the protagonist’s journey.
Eighth grader Ellen’s approaching bat mitzvah prompts questions about identity, friendship, family—and kindness.
Ellen, a Jewish girl in Brooklyn, doesn’t always have the time for her friends’ drama—or their real fears. She’s cranky about the frequent absences of her mom, a famous heart surgeon. Annoying Aunt Debbie overzealously plans Ellen a much-too-fancy bat mitzvah, so Ellen avoids her. Irritating classmate Allegra horns in on Ellen’s Hebrew school classes, and Ellen can’t stop griping about her. Does all this make her mean? Sure, she’s intolerant of her parents’ arguments, but she’s a great big sister to 5-year-old Hannah: They play with Hannah’s dolls, sign together about Hannah’s trips to the park and Ellen’s day at school, and go together to Hannah’s cochlear-implant doctor so Hannah won’t be scared. (The controversies around cochlear implants within the Deaf and hard of hearing community, of which narrator Ellen is presumably unaware, are not addressed.) And while Ellen’s not great at patience with her friend Ducks’ worries about dating his first boy, she totally wants to help him get together with her “Call of Duty” buddy Charlie. Bat mitzvah prep prompts Ellen to contemplate approaching womanhood. Can she gain generosity of spirit even if she remains instinctively judgmental? The pace of her philosophizing isn’t for every reader, but her pensive journey delivers a well-earned conclusion.
Coming-of-age as a ceremony makes a rewarding frame for the protagonist’s journey. (Fiction. 10-13)\Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8795-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A thought-provoking title for sophisticated readers.
A missing boy returns from another world. Will anyone believe his story?
When 12-year-old Aidan goes missing, his family and community members search everywhere in their small town. Things progress from worrying to terrifying when Aidan doesn’t turn up. No note. No trace. Not even a body. Six days later, Aidan’s younger brother, Lucas, finds Aidan alive in the attic they’d searched many times before. Aidan claims he was in a magical world called Aveinieu and that he got there through a dresser. While everyone around the brothers searches for answers, Lucas gets Aidan to open up about Aveinieu. Lucas, who narrates the story, grapples with the impossibility of the situation as he pieces it all together. Is any part of Aidan’s story true? YA veteran Levithan’s first foray into middle grade is a poignant tale of brotherly love and family trauma. The introspective writing, funneled through a precocious narrator, is as much about what truth means as about what happened. Though an engaging read for the way it makes readers consider and reconsider the mystery, the slow burn may deter those craving tidy resolutions. Bookish readers, however, will delight in the homages to well-known books, including When You Reach Me and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The cast defaults to White; the matter-of-fact inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters is noteworthy.
A thought-provoking title for sophisticated readers. (Mystery/fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984848-59-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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