Empowering and vigorous, this is a story sure to please princess fans, horse fans and, yes, even tomboys.
An energizing middle-grade tale inspired by true events.
Real-life princess Haya Bint Al Hussein is only 3 when her mother, Queen Alia of Jordan, is killed in a helicopter crash. Grief and a nasty governess (who adds fabulous tension to the story) subsume the princess until her father, King Hussein, gives her a 3-day-old orphaned foal from his stables for her sixth birthday. Haya and the foal, whom she names Bree—short for Bint Al-Reeh, or “Daughter of the Wind”—go on to compete, six years later, in Jordan’s prestigious King’s Cup. The present-tense, third-person narrative (except for two first-person epistolary segments) rivets readers as they learn about the inside world of a 12-year-old-to-be Jordanian princess—that and the horsey element would, by themselves, guarantee an audience. But Gregg goes much further, showing readers a strong-willed but compassionate girl who understands that her royal blood is not about privilege but about caring for others and who discovers her own inner strength in her determination to follow her dream of competing (lessons that stretch far beyond the royal set). It’s also a refreshingly active story—Haya is riding and leaping and playing outdoors (when she’s not grounded) on nearly every page.
Empowering and vigorous, this is a story sure to please princess fans, horse fans and, yes, even tomboys. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16887-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals.
Is dolphin-assisted therapy so beneficial to patients that it’s worth keeping a wild dolphin captive?
Twelve-year-old Lily has lived with her emotionally distant oncologist stepfather and a succession of nannies since her mother died in a car accident two years ago. Nannies leave because of the difficulty of caring for Adam, Lily’s severely autistic 4-year-old half brother. The newest, Suzanne, seems promising, but Lily is tired of feeling like a planet orbiting the sun Adam. When she meets blind Zoe, who will attend the same private middle school as Lily in the fall, Lily’s happy to have a friend. However, Zoe’s take on the plight of the captive dolphin, Nori, used in Adam’s therapy opens Lily’s eyes. She knows she must use her influence over her stepfather, who is consulting on Nori’s treatment for cancer (caused by an oil spill), to free the animal. Lily’s got several fine lines to walk, as she works to hold onto her new friend, convince her stepfather of the rightness of releasing Nori, and do what’s best for Adam. In her newest exploration of animal-human relationships, Rorby’s lonely, mature heroine faces tough but realistic situations. Siblings of children on the spectrum will identify with Lily. If the tale flirts with sentimentality and some of the characters are strident in their views, the whole never feels maudlin or didactic.
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-67605-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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