After his mother’s death from cancer, New Jersey seventh-grader Denny “Donuts” Murphy’s carefully crafted clown persona gets him in trouble at school without easing his grief.
As a distraction, his best (and only) friend, Manny, enlists him in a candy-sales scheme to make enough money to hire helicopters or whatever it might take to entice eighth-grade “hotties” to accompany them to the spring dance. But Denny would prefer classmate Sabrina, who seems to like him. Further complicating this story of healing-in-progress is the boy’s 300-pound father’s withdrawal. Both father and son are lost in their personal miseries—a point underscored with references to Les Misérables. The first-person narration chronicles six months of madcap behavior, flights of fancy and flashbacks revealing the reasons behind Denny’s downward spiral and predictable meltdown. The boys’ freedom to roam the halls of Blueberry Hills Middle School (limited only by encounters with a villainous eighth-grader) is surprising, but otherwise the school setting will be familiar, populated by some sympathetic adult characters as well as some less attractive ones. While some readers may tire of Denny’s frenetic goings-on, others, like Sabrina, will watch and wait patiently. They will be pleased by the improbable outcome. For middle school readers, a painful, funny and realistic picture of a family coming to terms with loss. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-38065-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The inexpertly juggled overabundance of storylines and themes makes this one to skip.
A trip to the past reveals family secrets and tragedies that help an Irish lad adjust to sad events in the present.
Cosmo’s brother, Brian, has recently died, his beloved grandfather Kevin is descending into dementia, his distraught mother has fled to Sydney in response, and his adored horse has been sent away. On a visit to nearby Blackbrick Abbey, he suddenly finds himself back in the 1940s, where he tries to impress the then–16-year-old Kevin with the importance of keeping both Brian and his powers of memory alive in years to come. He also helps Kevin to smuggle beautiful young Maggie onto the estate, but as Maggie proves less interested in Kevin than in the estate’s owner, the plot takes a soapy turn with an illegitimate child who turns out not to be the only one in the story. (Fitzgerald is coy about the sex, leaving Cosmo to puzzle over a character’s claim that Maggie is “unchased.”) Back in his own time, the discovery of hitherto-unknown family connections, along with the returns of his horse and his repentant mother, begins to buoy Cosmo. There’s far too much going on, but the author does thread Cosmo’s narrative with helpful precepts such as, “If you let the past determine your future, you’re probably screwed.”
The inexpertly juggled overabundance of storylines and themes makes this one to skip. (Time-travel fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8155-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Though classically modeled, this journey tale founders.
Two suburban teens ride a sailboat into Manhattan’s storm drains and meet quirky residents aplenty in this wittier-than-thou crossover effort.
Suddenly and uncomfortably thrown into one another’s company by their widowed parents’ romance, Timothy and Jessamyn express their displeasure with a prank. It backfires, sending them rolling down a Washington Heights street aboard the inaccurately named X-tra Large into a hole opened at a construction site. Disturbed but willing to go with the flow (so to speak), the two contrive to elude a massive police search, escape the clutches of the ruthless queen of a gang of subterranean art thieves and ultimately (by converting a stolen Turner canvas into a sail) survive the disastrous effects of a rainstorm. Unsurprisingly, they also bond. Bukiet chucks in such New York types as a stunningly gifted young graffiti artist and a seen-it-all police captain, along with the obligatory mentions of alligators, egg creams and dog-sized rats. He also pauses frequently for touristic disquisitions on Manhattan’s topography and the sights beneath which his protagonists are passing. Mannered references to, for instance, the flood’s “chthonic fury” (“A million drops are more than the sum of their splatters. They are voluptuous and deadly”) and analytical remarks on such topics as the craft of writing or art and money as social constructs will play better to older audiences.
Though classically modeled, this journey tale founders. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0589-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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