A slice-of-life novel for young readers that also models political engagement.
In VanDusen’s middle-grade novel, a girl recounts a summer of loss.
It’s the summer of 1985 in Creekside, California, and 12-year-old Ivy Anne Samuelson is complaining to her mother about having to attend a summer school program while her best friend is spending most of the summer away in Hawaii. Her kindly great-grandfather convinces her to get a new book from the library for them to read together. Thus begins Ivy’s summer—spending time with her mom and little brother, reading a book out loud to her great-grandfather, and attending school—which is not what she planned. Then a new family moves in next door, and one of them is a cute boy, Johnny Victor, who’sjust a few years older than her. Meanwhile, her closest friend in summer school, Tori, draws away from her after they have a heated conversation about religion; Tori’s family are devout, conservative Baptists, and Ivy’s family doesn’t go to church. Ivy has also expressed her concern for Mr. Peters, the youth librarian at the local library who quit his job because of failing health, due to AIDS, which doesn’t sit well with Tori’s bigoted family. Ivy’s summer takes another turn when Great-Grandpa has a medical emergency during one of their reading sessions. Soon, Ivy is spurred into action; she organizes a debate in her class and helps write a letter to the president about Mr. Peters’ circumstances. In this novel for young readers, VanDusen effectively writes of a time that feels quite different from the present, yet resonates with elements that engaged youngsters will find familiar. The author jumps forward and backward in time to tell the story and includes snippets of history, such as the origin of Cleve Jones’ brilliant AIDS Memorial Quilt: “A quilt, he thought, recalling the quilt his great-grandmother had made him as a child. Why not create a memorial quilt?” The narrative is generally quite linear and very easy to follow, however, and the author also does a fair job of breaking down complex situations for a younger audience.
A slice-of-life novel for young readers that also models political engagement.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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