A font-happy flop.
A besotted middle schooler invents an alter ego to hook up with a certain girl. It doesn’t go well.
Yearning for dreamboat classmate Lauren, self-proclaimed 12-year-old nerd Phil Dickens reinvents himself as a more athletic cousin named Mike, builds a bogus Facebook profile, and asks her out. Being, evidently, face blind, she agreeably hangs with him—until the deception inevitably unravels and she instantly professes her nerd aversion. No problem: Phil just as quickly acquires a new crush known only by the sobriquet “Big Mind Kill.” She is the dark-haired, brainier, intense polar opposite of blond, ponytailed Lauren. Phil unilaterally invites her to join his team for an upcoming STEM competition, and it’s on to an easy win in the climactic tournament. Along with cramming dizzying sheaves of different block-print typefaces onto every lined page, this tortuous narrative has little to offer readers beyond hand-wringing pronouncements about the hazards of lying and wearisome introductions to various nerdy icons from Bill Gates and Peter Parker to the casts of Big Bang Theory and The Goonies. The cast’s faces are all paper white in line and wash drawings that are, considering the deliberately rumpled page design, improbably expert.
A font-happy flop. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950912-18-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Ablaze
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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