A smart, endearing story about two girls who are blending families, growing up, and building a friendship.
Two girls named Naomi build an unlikely friendship after their parents begin dating each other.
Ten-year-olds Naomi Marie and Naomi Edith don’t seem to have much in common besides their names. Naomi Marie is black, active in extracurriculars, and a big sister to 4-year-old Brianna. Naomi Edith is white, more of a homebody, and an only child. Naomi Marie’s divorced parents live near each other. Naomi Edith is also co-parented, but she lives with her dad while her mom works temporarily across the country in California. When Naomi Edith’s dad and Naomi Marie’s mom take their dating relationship to the next level and introduce their daughters, both Naomis are overwhelmed. They chafe at their parents’ signing them up for a weekly video game–coding class for girls. Forced to spend time together—and to work together to design a game—the Naomis must face their differences and the changes happening in their families. The Naomis narrate their shared story in alternating chapters written by the book’s co-authors. The girls are funny and introspective, and their middle-class lives are rich with culture, creativity, and simple pleasures—day trips to the beach, bakery treats, imaginative games. Rhuday-Perkovich and Vernick offer young readers and their parents realistic, thoughtful insights into the emotional terrain of post-divorce family life and co-parenting.
A smart, endearing story about two girls who are blending families, growing up, and building a friendship. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-241425-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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SEEN & HEARD
Elegiac and hopeful.
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out.
When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.
Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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PERSPECTIVES
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