This funny, nuanced tale offers keen observations on middle-school life.
For eighth-grader Dina, being the new girl at school is a disaster.
Bewildered by her transition from popular girl to social outcast, Dina retreats behind her video camera. She hopes that the filter of the lens will help her decode life at her trendy new middle school. A school project with reigning “it girl” Chelsea seems to be a perfect chance for Dina to improve her social status. Meanwhile, Chelsea desperately harbors a secret that compels her to maintain the status quo among her exclusive peers even as she begins to question their occasionally cruel behavior. Writing in the alternating voices of Chelsea and Dina, Greenwald explores the perks and pitfalls of popularity, demonstrating how those on both sides of the popularity divide can be victims of people’s misperceptions. While Dina’s composure seems precocious at times, her practical perspective combined with her wry humor and Chelsea’s increasingly astute reflections makes this very accessible to pre-and early teen readers. In the process of working together, however reluctantly, Chelsea and Dina gain insight about each other and themselves that readers will benefit from.
This funny, nuanced tale offers keen observations on middle-school life. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0026-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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