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
A heartfelt tale with classy, indelible characters.
A new neighbor brings change and mystery to rising seventh grader Alberta Freeman-Price.
Despite the fact that Alberta and her dads are some of the small number of Black people in Ewing Beach, California, Alberta leads a pretty chill life, surfing and eating ice cream with her best friend, Laramie. Then the bed-and-breakfast across the street is taken over by new neighbors from New York, a Black single mom and her goth daughter, Edie. The fact that Edie is Black fuses the bond between the two. When Edie discovers mysterious journals in the attic of the B&B, she shares them with Alberta. The author of the journals was Constance, a young woman who apparently worked as a nanny in the building during the 1950s. The girls’ obsession with the journals combines with their emerging friendship to cause Alberta to feel torn between Laramie, who is White, and Edie. While Alberta and Edie juggle the awkward, sometimes-painful dynamics of middle school friendships, bullies, and racism, their research into the journals leads the girls to a discovery of family and racial dynamics that transcends time. Colbert’s middle-grade debut, centering Black girls who represent a range of experiences, deserves a standing ovation. Alberta’s narration is perceptive and accessible as she navigates race in America in the past and present.
A heartfelt tale with classy, indelible characters. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45638-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character.
A precocious seventh-grader tries to turn over a new leaf and end her term as the class clown.
It’s New Jersey, 1990, and Jacky Hart is the middle child in a family with six other girls. Attention is hard to come by, but Jacky has earned her fair share by being the endlessly funny member of her large, white family. Unfortunately, Jacky’s teachers do not appreciate this goofball attitude. Jacky joins the school play to channel her talents creatively and discovers a passion for performing, but not all is well. Jacky's mother is overseas as a citizen soldier in the run-up to the first Gulf War, and her lifeguard father is spending way too much time with an attractive female fellow lifeguard. A lot of other things happen too, but this is typical for Patterson. His novels are made or broken not by their plots but by their lead characters, and Jacky is the best yet. Fun, smart, emotionally engaging, Jacky is a character that young readers will love spending time with. Sure, the novel could lose about 100 pages and still tell the same story, but Jacky and her sisters are so endearing readers won't feel the effects of the chubby second and third acts until long after finishing the book, and few will really care. Pop-culture references from the ’90s and the 2010s (for comparison) abound.
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26249-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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