A poignant, visceral story about superstition, unresolved grief, and the wounds they can inflict.
The shadow of death looms over a girl’s life in this coming-of-age tale set in 1970s Chennai in Southern India.
Reddeppa’s debut follows an eventful year in Pavithra Ramachandran’s life as she negotiates the ups and downs of her intergenerational Tamil family. Beloved though Pavi is, her birth is always mentioned in the same breath as her maternal uncle Selva’s untimely death at 26, just a few months later. Pavi, who’s almost 9, feels a strong connection to Selva Uncle, and to Chanki, her paternal granduncle, who’s the black sheep of the family with a flair for storytelling. When a grieving relative lays the blame for Selva’s death on Pavi’s shoulders, saying that her birth came with a sign of a curse, Pavi’s actions set in motion a chain of events that lead to danger and unearth troubling family secrets. Strong-willed, impetuous Pavi is an intriguing character, though her words and actions sometimes feel much older than her years. The initially sunny narrative takes a dark turn and includes incidents with predatory men, threatened violence from an exorcist summoned to rid Pavi of her grief, and graphically described injuries resulting from her own rash actions. The plot sags in the second half but effectively tackles themes including unquestioning faith and the power of words to uplift or crush a child’s psyche.
A poignant, visceral story about superstition, unresolved grief, and the wounds they can inflict. (family trees, Tamil culture note, author’s note, glossary) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781643796758
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tu Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
