Sweet, funny, exciting—a spectacular debut.
After an attempt to go coed fails, one seventh-grader remains the lone boy at an all-girls school.
Jeremy Miner has become the last boy at St. Edith's Academy, and he can't take it anymore. Everywhere he turns there are girls, and his family doesn't help either. All he has are sisters and a mom, a mom who works hard at St. Edith's to get Jeremy free tuition to the prestigious school. Jeremy's family can't afford a different fancy school, and his mom refuses to transfer him to the subpar public school. And so, in desperation, Jeremy conspires with his best friend, Claudia, to pull a series of pranks that he hopes will get him expelled. The escalation in pranks is equaled by the dramatic complications: Malone uses the high-concept premise as a backdrop for her well-sketched characters. Every one of these characters is given just enough shading and hints at an inner life to be entirely believable. This is a completely thought-out world, and the author uses it to explore class issues, family dynamics, gender roles, and preteen friendship. Most impressively, the author doesn't shortchange any of these explorations, nor does she turn the book into a sermon. This is a funny, emotional book that will quickly become a favorite to many a reader, regardless of age.
Sweet, funny, exciting—a spectacular debut. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4435-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A worthy addition to the foster-family shelf.
Sent to a foster home after a beating from her stepfather, eighth-grader Carley Connors learns about a different kind of family life, first resisting and then resisting having to leave the loving, loyal Murphys.
Carley is a modern-day Gilly Hopkins, bright and strong, angry and deeply hurt. She’s torn between her love for her mother and her memory of the fight that sent her to the hospital, when her mother caught and held her for her stepfather. Her foster-care placement is terrifying. Mr. Murphy, a fire chief, and his eldest son Daniel don’t even want her there, and Mrs. Murphy is just too nice. It is 4-year-old Michael Eric and his red-headed brother Adam who first break the ice. Slowly won over at home by the boys’ open affection and Mrs. Murphy’s patience and surprising understanding, Carley also finds a friend at school in the prickly, Wicked-obsessed Toni. The first-person narration allows readers inside Carley’s head as she fights against both showing emotion and her growing pleasure in belonging to their world. There’s plenty of snappy dialogue as well. By the end of this poignant debut, readers will be applauding Carley’s strength even if they’re as unhappy as Carley is about the resolution.
A worthy addition to the foster-family shelf. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25615-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
There is nothing like a good clean competition to convey some wise lessons about life, love, friendship and honest...
Schaefer (The Teashop Girls, 2008) reunites best friends Annie, Genna and Zoe and presents them with their newest challenge, a baking contest featuring some tech-savvy publicity for the shop.
The summer before ninth grade, Annie, barista extraordinaire at her grandmother’s Steeping Leaf teashop, is fully immersed in her scone recipes, endeavoring to create the most original, tasty one for a competition with a grand-prize trip to London. Rules stipulate that entrants keep a food blog to generate interest in their ideas. Finalists for the Chicago-based bake-off will be chosen from the five blogs with the most followers. With the deadline approaching, Annie enlists her friends, family, shop patrons and residents at large of Madison, Wisc., to comment as often as possible on her daily entries of recipes, successes and failures. Annie’s dialogue-oriented narration smoothly melds fair competition with information about scone baking and the myriad wonders of tea drinking without feeling out of teen character. Genna’s return from New York with indications of some anorexic behavior is lightly addressed, as is Zoe’s interest in organic gardening. Meanwhile, Annie’s busy summer is made all the more confusing by a first kiss from her nemesis, Zach, and a nagging feeling that one competitor is displaying poor sportsmanship.
There is nothing like a good clean competition to convey some wise lessons about life, love, friendship and honest achievement. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1959-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
