Thoughtful, earnest, and gratifying.
Just as his mother enters a nursing home with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a biracial (black and white) seventh-grade boy finds solace in a complex video game.
Nick Reeves hates everything about the day that his white mom goes to be “locked up” at Sunrise House. He’s so convinced that she’s been misdiagnosed that he keeps a log of her Alzheimer’s symptoms, hoping to disprove his parents’ conclusions. His preoccupation with his mother’s status even leads him to choose exploring her roots in East Berlin for a school history project despite the fact that his historian father’s books on the African-American experience would make researching that side of his family a snap. Meanwhile, in his persona as a gray elf treasure hunter/explorer named Severkin in the video game “Wellhall,” Nick encounters an older gray elf, Reunne, who he is convinced is his mother, trying to reveal to him the truth of her past and future. At the game’s memory wall Reunne declares: “This is my family, my history. This is everything I am.” Rosen adeptly explores memory and personal history as well as the loneliness of losing a parent, the complexity of biracial origins, and the metaphors of a quest and a divided city. While the story is occasionally heavy-handed and repetitious, readers—gamers and nongamers alike—will cheer the resolution of Nick’s transformative journey.
Thoughtful, earnest, and gratifying. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93323-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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