Sticking to the original storyline, this tale offers a contemporary vision of sisterhood that will appeal to a diverse...
In this modern, graphic retelling, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are all offspring of a blended, interracial family that lives in a New York City apartment.
It works surprisingly well, both in Terciero’s colloquial dialogue and Indigo’s clean, well-paced sequential panels (her pencils were inked and colored by a team), and lovers of the classic will enjoy seeing how the reboot corresponds to the source text. Their white mother struggles, working double shifts while their father, who is black, is deployed in the Middle East. Both Meg, who is black, and Jo, who is white, were born to their parents prior to the marriage. Beth and Amy are the biracial younger sisters of the family. Dispersed throughout the story are entries from Jo’s journal and emailed exchanges between the girls and their dad, who affectionately refers to his daughters as “little women.” Wealthy Laurie and his grandfather are their Latinx neighbors. Meg and Jo take on the responsibility of the household, caring for their younger sisters. Meg works as a nanny, while Jo works as a personal assistant for her aunt. The March sisters squabble over chores, tease one another, and tackle school, where Amy silently endures racist bullying by white girls who tease her about her nose size and hair texture, even calling her “Africa” and hitting her. While the elder sisters navigate boys, fragile Beth is diagnosed with leukemia, spawning the best scene, in which the sisters all shave their heads when Beth loses her hair during chemo. It is regrettable that the racism Amy endures is resolved far too easily and is sidelined by other events in the book.
Sticking to the original storyline, this tale offers a contemporary vision of sisterhood that will appeal to a diverse audience. (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-52286-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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