A competent, if somewhat belabored take on sensitive family issues.
Twelve-year-old Maggie’s contented life is disrupted.
Sure, only child Maggie’s parents insist they all eat dinner together at the table, and they are big on engaging her in dinner conversation, but though she complains a bit, she is secretly happy that they are so persistent about communicating with her. And she is glad she doesn’t have best friend Olive’s life, with a chaotic little brother, or other BFF Rachel’s situation, with family members who eat separately in front of various screens. While Maggie is nervous about being in middle school, she knows her parents are always there for her. Plus, she has her beloved grandmother, who has taught her about interior design—something Maggie adores and shares with her BFFs. But everything starts to unravel when a previously unknown 13-year-old half brother from an affair her father had shows up and, on top of that, Maggie’s grandmother shows signs of Alzheimer’s. While the storyline admirably tackles difficult issues with compassion and evenhandedness, the writing overall feels more dutiful than original. Many scenes seem contrived to lead up to a neatly wrapped message that is insistently spelled out instead of being presented for readers to discover for themselves. The overarching interior design metaphor stretches itself thin in Maggie’s first-person–narration revelations. Characters are White by default.
A competent, if somewhat belabored take on sensitive family issues. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79720-123-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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