by Megan McCafferty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2013
Jessica’s take on junior high may be superficial, but she brings readers on a funny ride, even if many—perhaps even most—of...
Starting with Sloppy Firsts (2001), McCafferty explored the later teen and early 20s years of angst-ridden Jessica Darling in a five-book series. In this start to a new series, Jessica comes back for younger readers as an angst-ridden (of course) seventh-grader.
Jessica’s older sister, Bethany, took junior high by storm, so popular, well-dressed and successful (in her own eyes) as to become co-captain of the vaunted junior high CHEER TEAM!!! Now she’s offering somewhat terse advice to guide Jessica along her path—perhaps not an altogether desirable one, since Bethany is a bit shallow. Jessica was counting on lots of help from Bridget, but her BFF’s star is rising as rapidly as Jessica’s is setting. Some potential new friends turn out to be less than supportive as well. Jessica, after abject failure at CHEER TEAM!!! tryouts, is chosen to be the anonymous costumed school mascot, a sea gull, a role she clumsily fills all too well. Brief characterizations of teachers and students are often humorously spot-on, and rules, such as those for cutting lines, fully capture the junior high social scene in all its often distressing ignominy.
Jessica’s take on junior high may be superficial, but she brings readers on a funny ride, even if many—perhaps even most—of her problems are not resolved by the end, setting up the next in the series, as expected. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-24499-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Poppy/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2015
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by RaidesArt
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Julia Iredale
by Mariko Nagai ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2014
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American...
Crystal-clear prose poems paint a heart-rending picture of 13-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa’s journey from Seattle to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
This vividly wrought story of displacement, told from Mina’s first-person perspective, begins as it did for so many Japanese-Americans: with the bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor. The backlash of her Seattle community is instantaneous (“Jap, Jap, Jap, the word bounces / around the walls of the hall”), and Mina chronicles its effects on her family with a heavy heart. “I am an American, I scream / in my head, but my mouth is stuffed / with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue / of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to.” When Roosevelt decrees that West Coast Japanese-Americans are to be imprisoned in inland camps, the Tagawas board up their house, leaving the cat, Grandpa’s roses and Mina’s best friend behind. Following the Tagawas from Washington’s Puyallup Assembly Center to Idaho’s Minidoka Relocation Center (near the titular town of Eden), the narrative continues in poems and letters. In them, injustices such as endless camp lines sit alongside even larger ones, such as the government’s asking interned young men, including Mina’s brother, to fight for America.
An engaging novel-in-poems that imagines one earnest, impassioned teenage girl’s experience of the Japanese-American internment. (historical note) (Verse/historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1739-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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