A lighthearted reminder to relax, unplug, and make time for family fun.
Sonal Gupta struggles to take a perfect family photo for a school project.
Despite Sonal’s efforts, however, no one has time for a photo: Sonal’s parents are busy on their phones, her older sister is glued to her laptop, her younger brother is engrossed in video games, and their energetic puppy, Jalebi, is bounding about. Seeing Sonal slumped in defeat, Sonal’s grandfather steps up to announce a camping trip. The weekend will be an opportunity for a digital detox—maybe they can even get some good photos. Unfortunately, their tent rips and is too small to fit them all, and overnight rain leaves them all grumpy. To top it off, Sonal bumps into her classmate Dina, whose family seems effortlessly flawless, as chronicled on Instagram. But as Jalebi gets into shenanigans, Sonal's family bands together to corral the pup, reconnect, and perhaps even snap a perfectly imperfect picture. Straightforward, dialogue-heavy storytelling, the use of a dyslexia-friendly font and paper, and frequent illustrations make for an engaging tale ideal for reluctant readers. The story moves at a fast pace, and while the ending is a bit rushed, Sonal’s realizations that carefully curated online content isn’t always accurate and that every family has its share of messy moments will resonate. Sonal and her family are of Indian descent; Dina appears white.
A lighthearted reminder to relax, unplug, and make time for family fun. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781454962755
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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