Very entertaining, with an irrepressible, cheerworthy heroine.
A red-haired girl has three weeks to prove that kids in wheelchairs can gain acceptance, popularity, and maybe fame in this middle-grade novel.
Bluebell Skinks is as bold as her frizzy red hair, and she’s fearless while practicing spins “in a purple wheelchair…the latest model.” She and her sister, Bonnie (blonde, calm, and tidy), have always been privately tutored; their wealthy dad worries about mean children. Spending summers with Mr. Skinks, Bonnie, and Grandmother Skinks, Bluebell is due to return to Europe, where she lives with her mother, but that’s delayed this year. Meanwhile, Mr. Skinks and Bonnie go out of town, leaving Bluebell with her busy grandmother—the perfect opportunity to secretly attend Mortimer Potts Elementary School. Her plan? She’ll “become the most popular kid in the history of the school, maybe even famous!” Bluebell impersonates her grandmother on the phone and arranges a good reception at the school, not least because the principal would love a job with Skinks Industries. Bluebell makes friends and gains admirers with one exploit after another while outwitting Hoops Russell, the school’s best basketball player, who becomes determined to discredit her. By the end, everyone sees disability differently. Cooper (Granny’s Teeth, 2017) keeps things bouncing along with improbable but amusing events, like a science teacher’s experiment gone awry. At the same time, a strong dose of realism makes Bluebell’s progress more believable; for example, she campaigns for student government not through impossible promises but by thinking through, and getting buy-in for, workable compromises. Though broad, humor can be pointed: Bluebell’s well-meaning teacher is quoted as saying, “We should remember that disabled people are just like us, almost.” If Bluebell seems a little too self-confident and mature to be a realistic role model, there’s also an adult wheelchair basketball team whose members’ athleticism even Hoops admires—and a twist ending that puts things in perspective. The pencil comic book–style illustrations are animated and nicely composed.
Very entertaining, with an irrepressible, cheerworthy heroine.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4808-7245-5
Page Count: 123
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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