Pleasant enough.
A shy 12-year-old runs for seventh grade representative against a popular mean girl.
Rachel Levin-Lopez, a White-presenting Latinx girl, has two very overprotective moms. Before Rachel was even born, Mom and Mami had lost another daughter to a tragic accident, so now she’s the only seventh grader who’s not allowed to walk to school alone. But for the first time, timid Rachel has friends: the Spyglass Sisterhood—ordinary Ellie, who is White; blunt and brilliant Kiara, who is Black; and sarcastic goth Alyssa, who is of South Asian descent. She and her friends have discovered that the telescope in Ellie’s house sometimes reveals people’s wishes and fears. Despite this magical element, the plot is grounded in familiar middle-grade themes; it serves mostly as a frame for a series of events in which Rachel finds a lost dog and gains some confidence. Kiara has nominated a reluctant Rachel to be the class representative, as her ideas for the role really are pretty great. With some cheerleading from the sisterhood, Rachel learns to speak up for herself at home and school both. The dialogue often reads far more like an adult’s than a 12-year-old’s, and Rachel’s opponent is cartoonishly vapid, but overall it’s a decent character arc—and Rachel gets to keep the dog. The characters’ diversity is mostly superficial; racial identity is not plumbed.
Pleasant enough. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4610-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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