A rare misstep from a first-rate author.
Twins Nora and Ben uncover a family secret: Their little sister, Birdy, was adopted.
The White family’s ancestry is European: Mother, a newspaper columnist, is Irish; Father, an art professor, is Italian. When Mother administers a home DNA test for her column about ancestry, Birdy copies her, preparing a test for herself using the kit Father rejects. When the results come back, the twins realize Birdy substituted her sample for Mother’s and that Birdy’s ancestry is Swedish. Confused, the twins confide in a former teacher who asks them if it matters. They decide it doesn’t but continue to probe the mystery; meanwhile, Mother makes weekly trips to place flowers on her best friend’s grave. The tale unfolds gently, with MacLachlan’s signature grace and luminous simplicity, but the complex subject—poised where nature and nurture intersect—both calls for and deserves more nuanced treatment than plot or format allow. Even though Birdy’s atypical adoption sidesteps difficult issues, young readers may wonder why Birdy’s birth mother made her choice and why her birth father’s unknown. Overall, the story has a comfortably old-fashioned sensibility, but the depiction of adoption, understandably simplified, is also outdated, conflating problematic adoption secrecy with secrets trivial and benign. Beyond outing family secrets, DNA testing has given parentage and ancestry renewed prominence in how we identify ourselves. The message that, in a loving family, being adopted “doesn’t matter,” while well-intentioned, is misleading.
A rare misstep from a first-rate author. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-288585-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
IN THE NEWS
A funny and timely primer for budding activists.
Problems are afoot at Emily Dickinson Elementary School, and it’s up to Bea Garcia to gather the troops and fight.
Bea Garcia and her best friend, Judith Einstein, sit every day under the 250-year-old oak tree in their schoolyard and imagine a face in its trunk. They name it “Emily” after their favorite American poet. Bea loves to draw both real and imagined pictures of their favorite place—the squirrels in the tree, the branches that reach for the sky, the view from the canopy even though she’s never climbed that high. Until the day a problem boy does climb that high, pelting the kids with acorns and then getting stuck. Bert causes such a scene that the school board declares Emily a nuisance and decides to chop it down. Bea and Einstein rally their friends with environmental facts, poetry, and artwork to try to convince the adults in their lives to change their minds. Bea must enlist Bert if she wants her plan to succeed. Can she use her imagination and Bert’s love of monsters to get him in line? In Bea’s fourth outing, Zemke gently encourages her protagonist to grow from an artist into an activist. Her energy and passion spill from both her narration and her frequent cartoons, which humorously extend the text. Spanish-speaking Bea’s Latinx, Einstein and Bert present white, and their classmates are diverse.
A funny and timely primer for budding activists. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 6-9)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2941-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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