The lovingly depicted birth of a blended family.
A Tacoma, Washington, girl with anxiety who longs for safety and security experiences dramatic changes when her father announces plans to remarry.
Stella Blue North—“twelve, almost thirteen”—and her brother, Ridge, 10, are taken completely by surprise when their dad announces he’s engaged to Whitney, his “surprise fiancée,” and that they’re moving to Las Vegas to blend their families. Ridge goes with the flow, but surprises are not good for Stella’s anxiety, and Whitney’s 15-year-old daughter, Vivian, is not enthused about sharing her room. Stella and Vivian form an alliance they call Supernova Quest to break up the impending marriage so they can return to their normal lives. The girls also attempt to see—and change—the future by consulting a mystic and a palm reader, getting a tarot card reading, and buying crystals. But the wedding seems inevitable, even when Stella’s mom reappears after completing rehab. Stella’s first-person narration gives readers an understanding of what it’s like to live with anxiety; she uses strategies from therapy, plays Tetris, and pets her emotional support pug, Pog. Some chapters open with upbeat postcards between Stella and a friend back home, and Stella develops a friendship with (and crush on) Cooper, a boy she meets in Las Vegas. Main characters are coded white; Cooper is Black.
The lovingly depicted birth of a blended family. (information about the zodiac, crystals, palmistry, and Chinese zodiac) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781250858498
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Godwin Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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