by Lisa Jenn Bigelow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2019
Warm and memorable.
Hazel Brownlee-Wellington is an encyclopedia of animal facts, lives on a goat farm, and is penning a guide to misunderstood creatures.
Not one to easily make friends, 13-year-old Hazel doesn’t plan to get close to anyone when she starts eighth grade at a new school. She just has to keep her head down until high school, when her life will return to normal with her reunion with her longtime best friend. Then one of her moms announces she’s pregnant. Mimi has already had two miscarriages; Hazel, understandably, refuses to be hopeful. She’s determined to live in denial until the new baby is born safe and healthy. Although she has a loving family, two new friends, and a herd of goats to keep her company, nothing is easy. She hopes On the Origin of Species will help her make sense of the changes in her life, but not even Charles Darwin can explain the challenges of growing up. Hazel’s emotional growth—her increasing understanding of who she was, is, and will be—is gradual. Her first-person narration is insightful; she’s highly likable, and her troubles and triumphs will sound familiar to many. Hazel, her biological mother, and her brother are white. The broad diversity among other characters is incorporated naturally: Mimi is black; one new friend, Carina, is a Mexican American trans girl, and another, Yoshi, a cis-boy, is Japanese American and uses a wheelchair.
Warm and memorable. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-279117-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by RaidesArt
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Julia Iredale
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Mae Respicio ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 2018
This delightful debut welcomes readers in like a house filled with love.
A 13-year-old biracial girl longs to build the house of her dreams.
For Lou Bulosan-Nelson, normal is her “gigantic extended family squished into Lola’s for every holiday imaginable.” She shares a bedroom with her Filipina mother, Minda—a former interior-design major and current nurse-to-be—in Lola Celina’s San Francisco home. From her deceased white father, Michael, Lou inherited “not-so-Filipino features,” his love for architecture, and some land. Lou’s quietude implies her keen eye for details, but her passion for creating with her hands resonates loudly. Pining for something to claim as her own, she plans to construct a house from the ground up. When her mom considers moving out of state for a potential job and Lou’s land is at risk of being auctioned off, Lou stays resilient, gathering support from both friends and family to make her dream a reality. Respicio authentically depicts the richness of Philippine culture, incorporating Filipino language, insights into Lou’s family history, and well-crafted descriptions of customs, such as the birdlike Tinikling dance and eating kamayan style (with one’s hands), throughout. Lou’s story gives voice to Filipino youth, addressing cultural differences, the importance of bayanihan (community), and the true meaning of home.
This delightful debut welcomes readers in like a house filled with love. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1794-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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by Mae Respicio
BOOK REVIEW
by Mae Respicio
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