A sweet story about letting go and allowing life to lead the way.
To say Christa Vasile loves Christmas is an understatement.
She always sets the Best Christmas Plan Ever into motion on Nov. 1, with the goal of outdoing the previous year’s celebration. This year’s excellence has already surpassed the others, as Christa and her parents will be going to Europe. But then her parents drop the bad news: they’re getting a divorce, and the “coppery”-skinned 13-year-old with “crazy-thick hair” and “eyes that crinkle up in the corners” (but no named race) and her similar-looking mother will go to Europe for some “mother-daughter time.” Christa’s actress mother will perform in venues throughout their trip, which means Christa has to join the “kid portion of [the] tour” with the other actors’ children: hyperexuberant Kylie, artist Sasha, Harry Potter superfan Owen, spiky-haired Logan, and cute hipster Colby. (Sasha is Asian; the rest appear to be white.) After Christa spies her mother making out with Kylie’s father, her hopes for a parental reunion go out like a candle in the wind. However, a surprise from her father lifts Christa’s spirits. He’s continuing their holiday scavenger hunt tradition with one dare for each of the 12 days of Christmas. The tasks encourage Christa to allow the unexpected to lead her to new and exciting places. Her first-person present-tense narration carries the story, and Burt does an excellent job of bringing the magic of Europe to life on the page.
A sweet story about letting go and allowing life to lead the way. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-241618-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals.
Is dolphin-assisted therapy so beneficial to patients that it’s worth keeping a wild dolphin captive?
Twelve-year-old Lily has lived with her emotionally distant oncologist stepfather and a succession of nannies since her mother died in a car accident two years ago. Nannies leave because of the difficulty of caring for Adam, Lily’s severely autistic 4-year-old half brother. The newest, Suzanne, seems promising, but Lily is tired of feeling like a planet orbiting the sun Adam. When she meets blind Zoe, who will attend the same private middle school as Lily in the fall, Lily’s happy to have a friend. However, Zoe’s take on the plight of the captive dolphin, Nori, used in Adam’s therapy opens Lily’s eyes. She knows she must use her influence over her stepfather, who is consulting on Nori’s treatment for cancer (caused by an oil spill), to free the animal. Lily’s got several fine lines to walk, as she works to hold onto her new friend, convince her stepfather of the rightness of releasing Nori, and do what’s best for Adam. In her newest exploration of animal-human relationships, Rorby’s lonely, mature heroine faces tough but realistic situations. Siblings of children on the spectrum will identify with Lily. If the tale flirts with sentimentality and some of the characters are strident in their views, the whole never feels maudlin or didactic.
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-67605-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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