bookshelf

WHAT THE DOG SAID

Name: WHAT THE DOG SAID
Author: Randi Reisfeld
ISBN: 978-1-59990-702-4

by Randi Reisfeld with H.B. Gilmour ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2012

This dog tale will, nonetheless, appeal to animal lovers, who may “hear” their pets’ voices just as clearly.

bookshelf

A talking service-dog–in-training may relieve 13-year-old Grace’s crushing grief after her father’s death.

It’s a project Grace’s older sister Regan has begun merely to enhance her college applications. After choosing a dog from the animal shelter, she enrolls it in service-dog training. Grace, forced to help, naturally selects the rangy mutt, Rex, that shouts, “Pick me!” in a voice only she can hear. Rex insinuates himself into her life, an aimless existence since her father, a police officer, was murdered in an unsolved shooting six months earlier. Grace has dropped out of her own life, failing school and shutting out her friends. When a young gang follower Grace suspects was involved in the shooting joins the dog training class, she takes the opportunity to investigate and finds out—quite a bit too easily—who killed her father. Reisfeld resorts to telling rather than showing too often: “I needed to uncoil the knot of loss inside me, to unlock the dark cell I’d been living in since Dad died,” for example, resulting in a voice that never rings quite true. Other characters, too, seem trite, with the best voice being that of the enthusiastically inquisitive dog, leaving this an imaginative but not fully realized concept.

This dog tale will, nonetheless, appeal to animal lovers, who may “hear” their pets’ voices just as clearly. (Fantasy. 10-14)

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-59990-702-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

bookshelf

SEE YOU IN THE COSMOS

by Jack Cheng ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2017

Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MANY MASKS OF ANDY ZHOU
by Jack Cheng ; illustrated by Jack Cheng

bookshelf

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

From the School for Good and Evil series , Vol. 1

by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.

bookshelf

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)