The dawdling pace and obvious, militaristic similes combine to undercut its top-notch research and compelling premise for a...
The tone is as welcoming as warm honey over corn bread. Ah, if only a coming-of-age novel could live by bread alone.
Pearsall, 2003 winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction with Trouble Don't Last, presents the excellently researched tale of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, little known all-black paratroopers serving during WWII. Her tale of 13-year-old Levi Battle’s struggle to find his place in the world during World War II should be the kind of book teachers handpick for their students, especially reluctant-to-read males. However, if this effusive, lengthy story is bread and honey, the flavor, drowned in similes, metaphors and foreshadowing, gets diminished by too much “writing.” Strip away the excess, and you’ve got the tender story of a displaced boy hungry to connect with the war-hero father who is more legend than parent. Dumped at his Aunt Odella’s because his father is at war and his mama has run off, Levi is stunned to learn his aunt is packing him off to his father at a base in North Carolina. The Chicago boy is plunged into the racist South, with its separate drinking fountains and oppression that hangs like humidity.
The dawdling pace and obvious, militaristic similes combine to undercut its top-notch research and compelling premise for a disappointing conclusion. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-83699-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Filled with witty banter, this mystery is sure to appeal to soccer fans and aspiring sleuths alike.
Presented in the form of a dossier, this mystery about a popular eighth grader who goes missing centers around friendship, family, and soccer.
When Ella Hart, captain of the soccer team and Birchfield Middle School’s student council president, goes missing before an important game, her teammates and classmates are mystified—and the note she leaves behind doesn’t help clarify things. The Ella everyone knew would never have missed the “game she’d literally spent eleven months preparing for.” As the evidence unfurls, the question arises: Did anyone really know Ella at all? Sadie Wheeler (a new arrival from Philadelphia whom Ella quickly befriended) and Alice “Pug” Fitzpatrick (Ella’s co-captain) work together to investigate what happened. While Pug doesn’t necessarily like Sadie, considering her a “(sort-of) nemesis,” she understands that they need to team up to solve the mystery of where Ella went and more importantly, why she’s gone. This story is told through pieces of evidence, including emails, text messages, audio transcripts, and journal entries. This format allows Morrison to tell her clever, moving story from multiple perspectives, increasing reader engagement through the appealing variety of voices; the collection of peripheral characters truly make this novel stand out. Ella, Sadie, and Pug are cued white, and contextual clues signal some diversity in the supporting cast.
Filled with witty banter, this mystery is sure to appeal to soccer fans and aspiring sleuths alike. (character list) (Mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781419784750
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
An honest, emotionally rich take on disability, family, and growing up.
A middle schooler with cerebral palsy faces a new school and family upheaval in Sumner’s debut.
Twelve-year-old Ellie Cowan dreams of becoming a great baker; when she’s not penning letters to celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes. But sometimes—especially when her single mom’s protectiveness goes overboard—her CP feels like “the Go to Jail card in Monopoly: No matter where you are, it always shoots you back to zero.” When Ellie and her mom temporarily move from Nashville, Tennessee, to Eufaula, Oklahoma, to help care for Grandpa, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, Ellie struggles with being not only “the new kid in the wheelchair” at school, but one of the ostracized “trailer park kids.” But after Ellie befriends outspoken aspiring singer Coralee and fact-reciting “mega geek” Bert (who is, Ellie observes, “probably on the spectrum” but undiagnosed in this small town with little support), the quirky trio find themselves cooking up ways for Ellie to stay—“maybe forever.” Her voice equal parts vulnerable, reflective, and deliciously wry, Ellie is refreshingly complex. Kids navigating disabilities may find her frank frustration with inaccessibility, illness, and patronization particularly cathartic, but readers with and without disabilities will recognize her desire to belong. The mother of a son with CP, the author portrays Ellie and her mom’s loving but fraught relationship with achingly vivid accuracy, bringing the tension between Ellie’s craving for independence and her mother’s fears to a satisfying resolution. Characters, including Ellie, appear white.
An honest, emotionally rich take on disability, family, and growing up. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4255-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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