A night to remember, stocked with comic mishaps and meaningful lessons learned.
A night of manic misadventures heralds life-changing events and insights for a graduating eighth grader.
On the night before graduation—and with extreme reluctance stemming from a tendency to suffer anxiety-fueled “Dread Spirals”—Jensen Chapman crawls through his bedroom window to join besties Maleek and Cooper in an exchange of terrifying dares with a rival set of girls. The ensuing hilarious events range from driving off bullies with help from a pair of trained ferrets through hanging out with the girls and actually talking to his crush, Leslie Chen, to accepting dares that sometimes skirt legality. These antics repeatedly force Jensen to face his gnawing fears, and the night ends with revelations that threaten to upend his world. Hall shows a knack for crafting comically frantic situations and clean but authentic-sounding dialogue. Jensen’s sister, Maddy, a high school senior, offers words of wisdom that will comfort readers who may be feeling anxious over changes in their own lives: “Every good thing in life has to be held loosely. We can try clinging to things as tight as possible, but they have a way of slipping through our fingers no matter what.” Hall equips Jensen with the empathy to mend existing friendships and forge new ones (including with Leslie). Jensen and Cooper present white, and Maleek is Black. Names cue further diversity in the cast.
A night to remember, stocked with comic mishaps and meaningful lessons learned. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781547618118
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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