Online gaming, family expectations, friendship, and honesty, explored with balance, humor, and insight.
Comedian Ranganathan and co-author Day present a British tween gamer’s journey of self-discovery.
Yasmin Bandara learns, thanks to her best mate, Zane, that she’s a prodigy at GoalPro7, an online soccer simulator. GoalPro7 is electrifying compared to The Monkey House, which “not-very-secretly taught you maths or science while you did something borderline fun” and is the only game her parents allow Yasmin and her 10-year-old brother, Dinesh, to play. Seeing her genius, Zane loans Yasmin his console, and thus her deception of her parents begins. Soon, as a high scorer, Yasmin is invited to compete in esports conventions for both games—taking place in Birmingham, England, on the same day. The tension peaks as Yasmin must decide how to juggle these competing events, weighing commitment to her Monkey Meet-up team against her desire to excel at GoalPro7. When her parents discover her deception, they forbid her to speak to Zane or do any gaming, so Yasmin focuses on studying to fulfill her parents’ expectations that she become a doctor—until Zane makes a discovery that turns Yasmin’s fortunes around. Despite the book's slightly one-dimensional supporting characters, some overly convenient scenarios, and a too-tidy ending, readers will easily relate with the struggles of the multifaceted protagonist, who presents South Asian. The illustrations are enjoyably playful, and the fast pace and conversational tone give the work reluctant reader appeal.
Online gaming, family expectations, friendship, and honesty, explored with balance, humor, and insight. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780241493281
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Puffin/Penguin Random House UK
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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
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