A time of turbulent change in the United States is echoed in the relationship between best friends Silvy and Mabelee. Brown v. Board of Education has just been adjudicated, and 12-year-old Silvy’s small Texas hometown is unsettled. Until then, there was no problem for a white girl and a black girl being best friends. Suddenly, Silvy’s family is urging her to make friends with her own kind, although they couch it in vague terms. Mabelee doesn’t come around the way she used to and even starts calling her former best friend “Miss Silvy.” While Silvy is trying to figure this all out, none of the adults are acting normal and she cannot comprehend why lines are being drawn between the races. Apparently based on personal experience, Pérez’s story pulls no punches. She uses contemporary language freely and shows how seemingly “good, Christian” whites turned mean and dangerous. Silvy’s father seems not to act or respond to the growing crisis, but he surprises Silvy when he needs to. Ultimately, learning that bravery can come in small but crucial actions is a fundamental lesson for the now-wiser but sadder Silvy. Sure to provoke many on both sides of the political spectrum, this is an honest, heartfelt and truthful depiction of a small Southern town during the ’60s. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-57131-677-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Budding billionaire Greg Kenton has a knack for making money and a serious rival. When he issues his first Chunky Comic Book at the beginning of sixth grade, his neighbor and classmate Maura Shaw produces an alternative. Their quarrel draws the attention of the principal, who bans comics from the school. But when they notice all the other commercial messages in their school, they take their cause to the local school committee. Without belaboring his point, Clements takes on product placement in schools and the need for wealth. “Most people can only use one bathroom at a time,” says Greg’s math teacher, Mr. Z. Greg gets the message; middle-grade readers may ignore it in favor of the delightful spectacle of Greg’s ultimate economic success, a pleasing result for the effort this up-and-coming young businessman puts into his work. Clements weaves intriguing information about comic book illustration into this entertaining, smoothly written story. Selznick’s accompanying black-and-white drawings have the appearance of sketches Greg might have made himself. This hits the jackpot. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86683-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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