A Deaf girl won’t give up her quest to connect with a lonely whale.
Like many Deaf children, 12-year-old Iris has hearing parents, attends school with an interpreter, and has difficulty communicating with her classmates (especially the girl who believes her own invented gibberish is ASL). She had a close relationship with her Deaf grandparents, but her grandmother has withdrawn after her husband’s death, and Iris’ mom, a child of Deaf adults, has her own anxieties around her daughter’s need for Deaf community. The white girl’s troubles contrast with her black friend Wendell’s, whose hearing family is invested in Deaf language and culture. When Iris learns about Blue 55, a whale who sings at a frequency unintelligible to other whales, she feels an immediate kinship and concocts a plan to create a song Blue 55 can hear. A quick-moving, suspenseful plot takes her from junkyards to a cruise ship as she gains the confidence to stand up for herself and take control of her life. Written by a sign-language interpreter, this story incorporates important elements of Deaf culture and the expansiveness and richness of ASL but makes concessions to hearing readers in its recording of conversations. (ASL dialogue is appropriately rendered in fluent English.) The final suspenseful scenes strain credulity, and lengthy descriptions of frequencies and radio repair drag occasionally, but this remains a satisfying, energetic read.
Iris’ adventures will engross readers, though Deaf and hearing audiences will likely experience them differently. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-7023-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded.
GET IT
Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale.
Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Happily, her father works at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary, the zoo where Bob’s two best friends, Ivan the gorilla and Ruby the elephant, live, so Bob gets to visit and catch up with them regularly. Due to an early betrayal, Bob doesn’t trust humans (most humans are good only for their thumbs); he fears he’s going soft living with Julia, and he’s certain he is a Bad Dog—as in “not a good representative of my species.” On a visit to the zoo with a storm threatening, Bob accidentally falls into the gorilla enclosure just as a tornado strikes. So that’s what it’s like to fly. In the storm’s aftermath, Bob proves to everyone (and finally himself) that there is a big heart in that tiny chest…and a brave one too. With this companion, Applegate picks up where her Newbery Medal winner left off, and fans will be overjoyed to ride along in the head of lovable, self-deprecating Bob on his storm-tossed adventure. His wry doggy observations and attitude are pitch perfect (augmented by the canine glossary and Castelao’s picture dictionary of dog postures found in the frontmatter). Gorilla Ivan described Julia as having straight, black hair in the previous title, and Castelao's illustrations in that volume showed her as pale-skinned. (Finished art not available for review.)
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded. (afterword) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299131-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
