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CICI RENO

Name: CICI RENO
Author: Kristina Springer
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1751-9

#MIDDLESCHOOLMATCHMAKER

From the Yoga Girls series

by Kristina Springer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2016

A surprisingly successful, suspenseful, and engrossing take on the Cyrano story with a contemporary twist.

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To help her good-looking but painfully tongue-tied best friend, Aggie, land Drew, the boy of her dreams, Cici pretends to be Aggie online.

When it comes to savvy advice, Cici has a reputation of always being right, “like a Magic 8 Ball.” Nonetheless, Cici’s clever idea of impersonating Aggie on social media immediately backfires. Cici falls for the handsome hockey player herself, and Aggie is so different from Cici in person that Drew becomes confused. Told with a female protagonist, Springer’s shrewd update of the Cyrano de Bergerac story uses it as the perfect prism for middle school girls, demonstrating how hitting puberty at different times can affect social status, love relationships, and friendship. For a light, rather humorous novel, it’s a surprisingly potent theme, and it also brings up an interesting point: how these bodily changes are hard on the girls who develop early as well as on the ones who develop later. Although Cici is almost 13, two months older than Aggie, she still looks like a little girl, while Aggie is the reluctant owner of a pair of “ginormous” boobs. Cici and Drew are engaging characters whose behaviors feel organic, but Aggie’s character feels pieced together, a bunch of disparate traits molded to fit the plot. Springer makes little effort to populate her story with racially or ethnically diverse characters.

A surprisingly successful, suspenseful, and engrossing take on the Cyrano story with a contemporary twist. (Fiction. 11-14)

Pub Date: April 5, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4549-1751-9

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Sterling

Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
JUST YOUR AVERAGE PRINCESS
by Kristina Springer

- BOOK REVIEW
MY FAKE BOYFRIEND IS BETTER THAN YOURS
by Kristina Springer

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ESPRESSOLOGIST
by Kristina Springer

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THE WIG IN THE WINDOW

by Kristen Kittscher ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2013

Reminiscent of the ever-compelling film Rear Window, this appealing and often spine-tingling tale will leave its audience...

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Mayhem ensues when 12-year-olds Grace and Sophie spot the school counselor in the act of bloody murder.

The friends have been sneaking around on imaginative, late-night spying missions for some time, but they’ve been pretty tame. This changes when they see the already mysterious, cloyingly sweet and very unpleasant Dr. Agford attacking something—somebody?—with a streaming red cleaver, overhear her suspicious phone conversation and then decide to call 911. The call is traced to Sophie’s phone, and she takes full blame, since it turns out Agford was apparently just chopping beets. The girls, though, still think she’s up to something. Agford decides to begin “counseling” Sophie to keep tabs on her, kids at school begin to harass her, and the suspense ratchets up as the girls investigate the counselor’s background—and her bizarre wig. An FBI agent who at first seems likely to help begins to look threatening. Sensible and smart but socially ostracized fellow student Trista proves to be the voice of reason as Sophie’s world begins to fall apart. Sophie’s first-person narration rings true and makes the growing peril feel ominously real. Ample red herrings keep young sleuths and engaged readers guessing in this thrilling debut mystery.

Reminiscent of the ever-compelling film Rear Window, this appealing and often spine-tingling tale will leave its audience wishing for more . (Mystery. 11-13)

Pub Date: June 18, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-211050-3

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013

Categories:

CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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WORSE THINGS HAPPEN AT SEA!

A TALE OF PIRATES, POISON, AND MONSTERS

by Alan Snow ; illustrated by Alan Snow ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2013

There’s foolery aplenty, but this is the sort of sequel that offers more of the same rather than any new twists or...

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More cheese-centric shenanigans take the multispecies cast of Here Be Monsters (2006) far from the town of Ratbridge.

Faced with a heavy fine for drying their customers’ knickers in public, the rat and ex-pirate crew of the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry reluctantly set out for Black Cabbage Island in the South Pacific to fetch the active ingredient of a popular nostrum called Black Jollop. The revelation that Black Jollop infects all who take it with insatiable “cheese lust”—thus casting Ratbridge’s population of meek, ambulatory cheeses into mortal danger—turns the voyage into a race against time to bring back the cure. Snow trots in challenges ranging from the previous episode’s archvillain Archibald Snatcher and other members of the discredited Ratbridge Cheese Guild to attacks from a rushing horde of “shopping birds.” He intersperses his narrative with so many flashbacks, news reports, farcical set pieces (often involving various sorts of glop), small ink drawings, and larger diagrams or maps that the mission takes on a rambling pace.

There’s foolery aplenty, but this is the sort of sequel that offers more of the same rather than any new twists or developments. (partial cast list) (Fantasy. 11-13)