A tender, sober portrait of a middle schooler with OCD.
Scary things are happening, but Maggie can protect everyone if she gets her ritualized recitations right.
“It’s the night we’re going to get murdered so we’re sleeping on the living room floor,” she opens her narration. There’s just been a murder nearby, and the suspect is uncaptured. Mom and Dad aren’t worried, but anxiety and dread are big inside Maggie. Vulnerable baby bunnies next door are being raised for a restaurant; a classmate’s expecting a gun for his 12th birthday and seems likely to use it; and the murderer could be close by. Lane’s prose is quietly powerful, plain yet poetic: “my stomach doesn’t want me to go outside.” Tormented with intrusive visualizations of violence, Maggie holds her breath for counts of 60 and always recites her not-quite-prayer pleas twice each: “Please don’t let Gordy or the murderer kill us or anyone, please don’t let Gordy or the murderer kill us or anyone.” Things are scary, though Maggie also clearly has OCD or a like illness (never named); readers feel her anxiety and burden through her compulsory rituals, which will “keep us all from dying and keep the baby bunnies safe.” Maggie and her environment are presumably white; nonwhite allusions like “teepee eyebrows” are used as flavor, while two evidently black classmates are used as a historical desegregation reference, much to Maggie's discomfort.
A tender, sober portrait of a middle schooler with OCD. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-25781-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Words and art combine to create a moving story.
Imagination and drawing help two grieving children in this illustrated novel by the creator of the popular Timmy Failure series and the comic strip “Pearls Before Swine.”
Things are not looking up for Saint (“I wasn’t named for a bearded guy in heaven. I was named for a football team in Louisiana”). Her favorite toy store is demolished, and her beloved diner closes. It’s all part of the gentrification for which she holds her single mother, who works long hours as a real estate agent and frequently breaks her promises, responsible. Saint very much likes reticent neighbor Daniel “Chance” McGibbons, who uses a cane, but first she has to win his friendship after an awkward beginning at his birthday party. When the uncle Chance lives with sells to developers, Saint’s determination to save his home penetrates Chance’s reserve. The kids’ subsequent shenanigans will delight readers. The story is generously illustrated with Pastis’ characteristic black-and-white cartoon line drawings, mostly of the two round-headed kids, whose hair and skin are as white as the page. Longtime neighborhood resident Old Lady Trifaldi helps Saint learn to cope with change by looking at the stars from her roof, “to make time go backward.” Pastis fills this deceptively simple first-person account with humor, puns, turns, and twists—and the final twist gives this friendship tale its surprising depth.
Words and art combine to create a moving story. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781665929622
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Absorbing intrigue with a cliffhanger ending.
Through lying by omission, Weatherby earns a scholarship to an elite school, where she’s ready to use her position for the greater good.
The Boston School is proud of its sailing team. After Weatherby Walker wins a district regatta, beating Jack Hunt, who comes from one of the Boston School’s favored families, she’s offered a scholarship on the condition that she sail for the school. The only problem is, Weatherby accidentally used illegal sails that offered her an advantage. She decides not to admit her mistake; she’s desperate to attend Boston, her late, estranged father’s alma mater—especially since someone recently anonymously mailed her father’s old school journal to her. This is just the start of the mysteries and revelations to come, including ones that lay bare her family’s history and connections and deceptions by powerful people, all of which threaten ecological disaster. Everyone’s lying about something—and some of the lies are deadly. Last Heir, the Boston School’s elite secret society, seems designed to support corruption, indoctrinating generations of students and making them complicit. The chapters alternate between Weatherby’s and Jack’s perspectives; they’re both sympathetic characters from whom there’s much to learn about friendship and trust. This first entry in a new series sets up a solid premise, with white leads Weatherby and Jack and their somewhat racially diverse schoolmates confronting a powerful system. What happens next is left to be revealed in the sequel.
Absorbing intrigue with a cliffhanger ending. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781338859218
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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