Make room in your heart for this cathartic novel.
A girl seeks acceptance rather than judgment for her size.
Eleven-year-old Texan Ellie loves to swim in her backyard pool even though a cannonball during her fifth birthday party earned her the nickname “Splash” and endless jokes about whales. She maneuvers through life following unspoken “Fat Girl Rules,” chief among them, “Make yourself small.” Ellie dreads the start of sixth grade, partially because her best friend just moved away, but mainly because classmates bully her at every turn. The worst, though, is her mother, with her endless stream of derogatory comments, obsessive monitoring of Ellie’s food intake, and preoccupation with bariatric surgery (which Ellie knows is unsafe). Thankfully, Ellie has support in compassionate educators, tried-and-true friends, her beloved pug, and her more considerate psychiatrist father, who finds Ellie a therapist to work through her pent-up feelings. As a self-proclaimed poet, Ellie has a strong command of words, and she learns how and when to use them to defend herself. She also makes friends with her new neighbor, whose Mexican American family can empathize with being judged on appearances. Fipps’ verse is skillful and rooted in emotional reality. The text places readers in Ellie’s shoes, showing how she is attacked in many spaces—including by strangers on public transit—while clearly asserting that it’s other people who need to change. Half-Jewish, half-Christian Ellie is cued as White.
Make room in your heart for this cathartic novel. (Verse novel. 9-13)Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984814-50-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Thrills galore for gamers willing to go along for the ride.
A new virtual-reality theme park goes haywire on a crowd of young victims, er, visitors in Alexander’s latest screamfest.
Having scored one of just 100 coveted preview tickets to a cutting-edge, kids-only venue dubbed ESCAPE, budding amusement park fan and designer Cody Baxter is looking forward to a life-changing experience. What he gets is more of a life-threatening one, as games and rides with names like Triassic Terror and Haunted Hillside not only pit him against a monster and then zombies—or sometimes a monster and zombies—as well as ruthless competing players, but seem tailored to play on individual personal terrors. And, in some never explained way, the VR quickly turns into real battles that inflict real wounds even as the real settings shift with sudden, dizzying unpredictability. Teaming up with loyal new friends Jayson Torn and Inga Andersdottir, the former described as being Japanese and White and the latter as Norwegian, Cody (who seems to default to White) struggles for survival, learning ultimately that ESCAPE was created by an evil genius with an ulterior motive who is convinced that he can teach children a salutary lesson. The plot’s no more logical in its twists and contrivances than the premise, but the author’s knack for spinning out nightmarish situations is definitely on display here as the tale careens toward a properly lurid outcome.
Thrills galore for gamers willing to go along for the ride. (Light horror. 9-12)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-26047-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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