Some may find this overly sweet, but Bo is an endearing Pollyanna in a parka.
A warm tale set in an Alaskan gold-mining town in 1929-30.
Bo, a 5-year-old girl, was adopted as a newborn by two gruff but tenderhearted blacksmiths who’ve toiled in the mining camps of the Yukon for years. These unlikely fathers smoke a bit and swear a bit, but they love Bo with all their hearts. Theirs is an extraordinarily generous, solicitous, close-knit community, comprised of indigenous neighbors and workers from around the world. Events unfold at a leisurely pace in this narrative that’s enriched by authentic details that make the time and place come alive. Readers discover that life in a mining town means surviving brutal winters, handling day-to-day chores in all seasons while still having fun, doing backbreaking labor, and finally, actually extracting the gold from the dirt. (Readers will learn more than they probably ever needed to know about how this is accomplished.) Life in a remote backwater also entails high excitement, such as the townspeople’s first-ever sighting of an airplane and bulldozer. Warmth and love pervade this novel, an Alaskan version of the Little House books, and characters are well-drawn. Some realistically sad and frightening events occur, but the novel ends on a happy, though wistful, note. Final art was not seen, though samples are charming and reinforce the Little House feel.
Some may find this overly sweet, but Bo is an endearing Pollyanna in a parka. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9351-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Heartfelt and accessible: another winner from a beloved author.
Fourth grader Cassie dreams of solving all her problems by winning a contest.
It’s May 1984, and Cassie Carpenter feels overwhelmed by how much she needs—attention, space, money, and more. Things that feel trivial to others are overwhelming for her, and others call her “melodramatic,” “sensitive,” and “so emotional.” Still, Cassie’s problems are real: Her house is too small for everyone in her family to have their own bed or sit at the same table for dinner. Money is tight, and her mother is too tired to notice that Cassie needs her. At school, Cassie’s best friend starts pulling away, preferring an unkind classmate. Then, Cassie receives a life-changing piece of mail: A magazine sweepstakes declares her a “grand prize winner”! A catalog of prizes accompanies a magazine order form, and Cassie is swept away by fantasies of how a vacation or a water bed for her mom might solve all her problems. But soon she finds that the contest is far from the easy fix she imagined. Hale’s gift for capturing middle-grade joys and agonies is once again on full display, and fans of her Best Friends graphic memoir trilogy will find much to love in this series opener. Cespedes’ illustrations and Pien’s colors are vibrant and appealing, capturing the liabilities and, importantly, the gifts to be found in Cassie’s deeply emotional worldview. Cassie’s family reads white; other characters are racially diverse.
Heartfelt and accessible: another winner from a beloved author. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781250843067
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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Cleverly structured and sweetly engaging.
A 13-year-old embarks on a cross-country road trip with his famous grandfather.
Grief-stricken middle schooler Gonzalo Alberto Sánchez García’s summer is off to a rocky start. He feels like he’s in a fog, he can’t stop drawing monsters against photos of landscapes on his iPad, and he’s stuck visiting his cranky, standoffish abuelo in Mendocino, California. Gonzalo’s Cuban grandfather is the renowned but reclusive fantasy author behind a “billion-dollar book-and-movie franchise” run by Gonzalo’s mother. Though generally reluctant to promote his work, Abuelo agrees to a tour for the release of the last book in the bestselling series. But he turns the tour into a journey to visit old friends and share his own wounds with Gonzalo in an attempt to help them both heal from the traumas they’ve suffered. Indeed, Abuelo’s plan proves poignantly effective as both he and Gonzalo slowly open up to each other and to all the joy still to be found in the world around them. Cartaya peppers Gonzalo’s first-person narrative with chapters voiced by an omniscient first-person narrator who breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing readers with plot recaps and commentary. While the narrator’s interruptions risk jarring readers out of the story’s flow, the shifts in perspective are charmingly and humorously executed, may support reading comprehension, and further the overarching bookish themes, since the story both revolves around a fictional book series and follows main character Gonzalo’s transformation into the hero of his own story.
Cleverly structured and sweetly engaging. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780451479754
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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