Could pack more of a punch, but Natalie’s straightforward, heartfelt story will still resonate.
Cartoonist Scrivan’s debut graphic novel explores friendship breakups and coming in to one’s own.
Bespectacled Natalie and her best friend, Lily, used to be “two peas in a pod.” But after Lily moves, even though they both start at the same middle school, nothing is the same. Mean and dismissive, Lily has clearly dropped Natalie for their middle school’s cool girl, but Natalie is desperate to win her back no matter what. Convinced she’s “not enough” as she is, she tries everything from a new hat to suppressing her creativity. While she faces mild bullying from Lily and another classmate, a few newfound friends work unwaveringly to support Natalie in her journey to rebuild her self-esteem: “I’ve spent so much time thinking about what I’m not good at…that I never think about what I amgood at.” Both the illustration style and slice-of-life pacing have an early-2000s feel—think Amelia’s Notebook rather than Raina Telgemeier. Natalie’s first-person narration is so self-focused that secondary characters are exclusively there to contribute to her character development. Readers learn next to nothing about the internal lives of Natalie’s kind new friend Zoe or her crush, Derek, both kids of color. (Both Natalie and Lily are white.) While this isn’t unfitting—the premise is that this is Natalie’s sketchbook—it makes for underwhelming representation.
Could pack more of a punch, but Natalie’s straightforward, heartfelt story will still resonate. (Graphic fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-53821-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
An unsettling, engaging dream-world adventure
When pragmatic Stella’s imaginative twin brother, Cole, loses his spirit in the dream world, she must rescue him before he is consumed by shadow creatures who thrive on the creative brightness of human beings.
It begins when Cole investigates something he sees moving in the subway and becomes so spooked he leaves his treasured notebook of stories behind. Cole’s behavior swiftly changes, and Stella begins to have dreams that land her in the Dreamway, the place where all human beings go when they dream. There she encounters Anyway, a Door Mouse who just happens to possess a torn piece of Cole’s notebook. Anyway informs Sheila that her brother’s spirit has been taken by a Chimerath, and to rescue him, they must get to the Nightmare Line. Stella struggles to navigate her waking hours, during which Cole is becoming angrier and more violent, and her time in the Dreamway, where she and Anyway, with the help of a few Dreamway employees, work to find Cole before his light is completely drained. Though the worldbuilding can be arbitrary and is largely delivered in expository dumps from Anyway, this tale has a beguiling, appropriately Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland–steampunk feel. The book subscribes to the white default. Stella has a childhood stroke–induced physical disability by day; although it seems to disappear by night as she bravely traverses the unpredictable landscape of the dream world, Anyway tells her she is not healed, adding a layer of healthy realism.
An unsettling, engaging dream-world adventure . (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-237111-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
A richly satisfying exploration of the logic and determination with which children work to make things right. (Fiction 10-12)
When her unreliable mom is hired to cook and clean for a wealthy Alabama family, Mavis is hopeful they’ll stay long enough for her to have a best friend.
The Tullys’ daughter, Rose, is just Mavis’ age, and things looks promising, but the timid girl has been so browbeaten by her overbearing, haughty mother that she’s forgotten how to have fun. Mavis may be poor, but she has spirit enough for both of them. Rose spends most of her time with the elderly gatekeeper of Magnolia Estates, but ever since Mr. Duffy’s dog died he’s been slipping up at work, and Rose’s mother is anxious to have him fired. Mavis and Rose hatch a scheme to unite him with a stray dog they call Henry, who’s actually an escapee from Wonderland, a dog track, and who may be euthanized since his racing days are over. O’Connor, a master storyteller, presents this moving tale from the alternating viewpoints of the girls and Henry, using their unique narrative voices to craft an affecting story of loneliness and the redemptive powers of the human (and dog) spirit. The racial identities of Mr. Duffy and Mavis are kept deliberately vague (although she is pale-skinned on the cover, just like Rose), but it’s very clear that they are the underclass, evocatively contrasted against Mrs. Tully’s mistaken sense of superiority that even Rose learns to fight.
A richly satisfying exploration of the logic and determination with which children work to make things right. (Fiction 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-31060-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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