Readers will empathize as April displays spunk and resilience in addressing her mistakes and remaining true to herself
April’s much-anticipated eighth-grade year rapidly devolves into a debacle.
After a turbulent summer (Can You Say Catastrophe, 2013), 13-year-old April is excited for the new school year. She has been dating Billy for a month, and she has reconciled with her BFF, Brynn. However, new challenges arrive with the new year. April’s relationship with Brynn is jeopardized when an opportunity to try out for the high school dance team results in April being selected to join the team while Brynn is not. Familiar characters return as Friedman focuses on April’s relationship quandaries: her problems with Brynn, her mixed feelings regarding her relationship with Billy, and her perplexing interactions with the enigmatic boy next door, Matt. The journal format provides insight into April’s emotional life as she expresses her inner turmoil with poignant honesty. Friedman sensitively explores the emotional upheavals that sometimes accompany the middle school years. The revelation of April’s clandestine kiss with Matt wreaks havoc in her life. April’s lament, “Can a girl make a mistake without her life falling apart?” highlights the intense pressures of middle school social life. Relying on the sage counsel of both her grandmother and father, April navigates her way.
Readers will empathize as April displays spunk and resilience in addressing her mistakes and remaining true to herself . (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-0926-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While 11 is a time in a girl’s life when her body is undergoing changes, Linnet’s physical changes are highly unusual—she is growing wings. To her amazement, this bizarre fact doesn’t surprise her mother Sarah, who it turns out also had wings at Linnet’s age. But Linnet’s grandmother had cut off Sarah’s wings, not being able to imagine her navigating her way though life with them. After the school term ends, Linnet insists on going to look for, as she puts it, “anyone else like me.” After several days of travel and after being abandoned by her mother, Linnet ends up at her grandmother’s, who takes Linnet to an isolated house way up in the mountains, a secret place where other winged people live. Safe in the community of others like herself, Linnet and one of the others, Andy, try to teach themselves to fly but for various aeronautical reasons, they are both unable to. Linnet and Andy finally realize that they are unwilling to hide for the rest of their lives, even if it means being called freaks by intolerant people. The two kids decide to take their chances in the outside world with non-winged people. Oddly, there is not much explanation and surprisingly little discussion in the book about how and why these particular people grew wings and what the significance is. While a few theories are bandied about, none are really explored. The plot and characterizations are not skillfully crafted enough to allow a suspension of disbelief, and the book veers towards pomposity, seemingly raising weighty, philosophical themes, but never really taking flight. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-07405-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Things lost, things found, and their seekers are at the center of this novel about a girl’s prolonged mourning for her mother. In the wake of the sudden death of her mother, Sammy finds that her only consolation has been her best friend Bones, who shares with her the hope that their endless digging in their neighbors’ yards and the surrounding countryside will lead them to a magic discovery. Then Sammy’s long-absent Aunt Constance, her mother’s sister, comes for a visit. She is a real “finder,” sought out by others who have lost people and need comfort, answers, or both. In spite of that gift, Aunt Constance is unhappy; she is hounded by people who need her, and has no real home of her own. Worse, she has never been able to locate the one thing that means anything to her, the top half of a photograph of Sammy’s mother that has been placed in a threadbare pink satin jewelry box, which has been hidden. Sammy, anxious to locate anything that was her mother’s, quietly joins the search and succeeds, coming to terms with her loss and seeing that she has a real future, her own way. This tender and touching story of love, loss, and rediscovery is strongly plotted and poetically told, but the characters make it count; every one of them is someone readers will want to meet again. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32678-5
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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