A raw and vulnerable exploration of widely relevant and resonant themes.
A young teen navigates social pressures and a complicated relationship with her mother.
Since puberty, creative 13-year-old chess player Yasmin Safavi’s body has changed in disorienting ways. A year ago, her family moved from Iran to Ashbury Falls, Virginia, where she met her bestie, fellow new kid and Mexican immigrant Carmen Aguilar, and developed a crush on the cowboy boot–wearing Jack Westbrook. Yasmin’s mom wants her to lose weight to fit into the beautiful blue dress she’s making her for Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Maman deliberately made it too small—and she increases the pressure when Yasmin instead grows heavier. Yasmin tries skipping dinner, and after bingeing on what her mom labels “bad foods,” she makes herself throw up, leaving her feeling “ugly, broken, sad.” Longing to fit in with the popular girls and be noticed by Jack, she straightens her curly hair, plucks her thick eyebrows, and drifts away from Carmen. Yasmin also experiences racist bullying and confronts questions of identity, friendship, and self-respect. Along the way, a difficult but loving relationship with her mother evolves. Debut author Morrison, who emigrated from Iran as a teen, honestly examines disordered eating resulting from peer and familial pressures in graphic detail, pulling from her own relationships with her mother and body image. She also thoughtfully develops Yasmin’s and Carmen’s backgrounds, cultivating an understanding of each girl’s immigration experiences.
A raw and vulnerable exploration of widely relevant and resonant themes. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780374393601
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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