Skillful characterization carries this quiet novel along.
A young girl’s first-person narrative of her journey through grief to acceptance.
After her father’s death in an airplane accident, 12-year-old Wren is enveloped in a cloud of grief. With no body to bury, she mitigates her sadness by burying the animals she finds dead along the road. Wren’s mother retreats into anger, leaving Wren to feel abandoned by both parents. After several brief moves, the mother and daughter, both white, end up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Wren continues the bird-watching she so loved with her father. Through a school assignment, Wren learns that Pete’s Pond, her birding locale, is slated to be destroyed to expand a landfill. She and her project partner, Theo, who’s also white, lead a protest to stop the plan. Wren wrestles with whether to compromise her values to join the popular girls at school, deciding instead to be true to herself. By the predictable but satisfying ending, Wren has grown, with the help of Theo, whose mother previously died, toward acceptance, forgiveness, and a new definition of family. While it’s preachy in parts, the maudlin is averted by Wren’s authentic voice and the inclusion of engaging characters and substantive issues, ranging from peer pressure and bullying to infidelity and environmental concerns.
Skillful characterization carries this quiet novel along. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62370-749-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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