A relatable dive into the world of donor conception.
Quinn’s summer is transformed when she learns surprising news from her moms.
En route to their annual seaside holiday, 12-year-old Quinn’s mothers drop some big news: They’ve learned, from a website that connects families formed through donor conception, of the existence of 16 kids born to parents who used the same donor that Quinn and her 10-year-old brother share (Mom, who’s white, is the biological mother of pale, red-haired, green-eyed Quinn, while brown-skinned Mama is Olly’s biological mother). Quinn secretly logs into the website and, posing as Mom, initiates contact with a nearby family. She’s also secretly pleased to have broken her wrist—now she’s exempt from the frenzy of physical activities the rest of her “action-obsessed family” enjoys. Instead, she can draw and take walks; she even makes a new friend in an elderly man named Fred. Unfortunately, 13-year-old bully Monika Webber, whose family also summers at the same hotel, is hanging around. Quinn, who feels out of place in her family, hopes that one of her donor siblings will be more like her, so she’s appalled to find clues that make her suspect Monika may actually be her half sister. Things come to a head when Olly goes missing, and Quinn is pushed to new limits as she wrestles with concepts of family. Despite some two-dimensional characterization and a conclusion that ties things up too neatly, this novel fills an important space in queer middle-grade fiction.
A relatable dive into the world of donor conception. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9798887771533
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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