A bittersweet but hopeful take on loss, trauma, and the many meanings of family.
Traumatized by past neglect at the hands of an alcoholic parent, an “almost-sixth-grader” faces her phobia of being alone after her elderly friend is injured.
Tash resents that she has to go to camp while her loving great-uncle and custodian, Kevin, goes to New Zealand. She’d rather stay with her whimsical elderly neighbor, Cap’n Jackie, and hear her stories. Isolated by agoraphobia and grief, Cap’n Jackie retreats into a fantasy while Tash is away: An old key summons a magical dragon/dolphin and the spirits of her cat, Mulligan, and her partner, Vanessa. Tash had angrily thrown the key at Cap’n Jackie before leaving, a gesture with greater consequences than she realizes. While Tash is at camp, the friends’ brief handwritten correspondence reveals their mutual quick tempers as well as their bond. When Tash returns, she learns that Cap’n Jackie has been admitted to a rehab facility after breaking her hip—and, it seems, her spirit. Tash vows to find the key and make amends, not realizing that her solo mission is preparing her for being alone in a different way. (Readers, however, may notice some heavy foreshadowing.) Though her affection for Tash is clear, Cap’n Jackie herself is little more than a lonely old person—feistiness notwithstanding—whose ultimate function is to help Tash learn a life lesson or two. But Tash’s volatile emotions and Kevin’s gentle steadiness ring true, adding dimension to the tear-jerking trope. The book seems to adhere to the white default.
A bittersweet but hopeful take on loss, trauma, and the many meanings of family. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9566-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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