A young girl’s bumpy life begets an uplifting narrative journey.
In High’s middle-grade road-trip novel, a tween searches for her missing mother, who suffers from mental illness and addiction.
Ruby Bean hasn’t seen her mom in a week. This has happened before; 33-year-old Ruthie is afflicted with substance-use and schizo-affective disorders and occasionally disappears from her Georgia home. Luckily, Ruby’s grandparents live nearby, and she can always rely on Aunt Marion, Ruthie’s older sister. Ruby and Marion put their heads together to track where Ruthie has been and where she’s likely headed, leading them to such metropolises as Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Along the way, they run into Ruby’s estranged father (whom she’d never previously met) and people living on the street (Ruthie’s preferred crowd). Two among the unhoused, bubbly Daisy and warmhearted Benny, even join their search. Ruby struggles with wanting her mother back while also craving a more conventional kind of life. Their quest ultimately leads them all to a crime that, unfortunately, Ruthie may have committed. High ably tackles the serious issues depicted herein; Ruby unequivocally loves and worries about her troubled mother, but she’s also fed up with constantly explaining Ruthie’s condition to others. The narrative nevertheless remains firmly upbeat as Ruby, usually a loner, scours the East Coast with her devoted aunt and newly earned friends. Their road trip brims with misadventures (including the tribulations of New York parking) and humor (Daisy and Benny playfully bicker over which rock band sings a certain song). Ruby’s colorful descriptions further enliven the pages, from “green-ink trees” and a “blue ceiling” sky to her affectionate nickname for Marion’s bright-yellow compact car: “Kiki Sunshine.” The novel’s heady mix of realism and buoyancy carries all the way to the extraordinary ending. Dzamesi’s spectacular black-and-white artwork renders such indelible recurring images as Ruby’s big, soulful eyes and Daisy’s even bigger hat.
A young girl’s bumpy life begets an uplifting narrative journey.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781947159877
Page Count: 184
Publisher: One Elm Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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