“Things change” is the moral of Warner’s (How to Be a Real Person in Just One Day, 2000, etc.) deft, surprisingly gripping novel about an ordinary, small-town girl. All her life, 12-year-old Quinney Todd has been best friends with Marguerite Harper and Brynn Mathers. But now Marguerite, who is bored with the tiny town of Lake Geneva, is growing apart from her old friends. Then, shortly after their first year of middle school starts, itself a big change, Marguerite cuts class and goes for a ride with four beer-drinking high-school boys. The kids get into a minor car accident, but it has major repercussions for Marguerite’s reputation. This predictably leads to a moral dilemma for Quinney: should she defend her friend or reject her along with everyone else. The decision is not made any easier for her by Marguerite’s frankly unapologetic, tough-girl stance. This situation, coupled with Quinney’s new volunteer job at an animal shelter, the sudden dissension between her five-year-old twin brothers, and her fresh feelings for handsome eighth-grader Cree Scovall, all combine to keep Quinney scrambling to maintain emotional balance. Wisdom is supplied by the owner of the animal shelter, a prickly woman who “never met a person yet who could measure up to your average house pet” and was herself once the object of small-town gossip and rejection. Girls should root for Quinney, a basically good-hearted every-girl type, and identify with the garden-variety situations she has to cope with as she struggles to meet the challenges of growing up. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: June 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028274-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
15
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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