Unique and utterly satisfying.
1 math genius + 1 year of middle school = problems even the most gifted mind can’t anticipate.
Four years ago, 12-year-old Lucy Callahan was struck by lightning. The strike left her with brain damage, resulting in acquired savant syndrome and a “supercomputer brain.” Lucy can solve any equation, recall every number she’s ever heard or seen, and recite pi to the 314th decimal place (she doesn’t allow herself to go beyond that). Lucy has finished school online and is ready for college, but her grandmother has a few conditions for Lucy to meet before she’ll allow her to move on to higher education. (Nana is her guardian, her mother being dead and her father having split.) The reclusive Lucy has to develop her “soft skills”: She has to attend middle school for 1 year, make 1 friend, and join 1 activity. Math is comfortably predictable; every problem has an answer if you know how to find it. But Lucy quickly realizes no formula can calculate the perils and pitfalls of public school. The multidimensional, highly likable Lucy’s first-person narration is direct and unrestrained. In her first novel for middle graders, McAnulty (Max Explains Everything, 2018, etc.) eschews stylistic convention: All numbers are represented as numerals to allow readers to see the world the way Lucy does. Lucy is white, but she does not subscribe to the white default, observing and describing skin color evenhandedly.
Unique and utterly satisfying. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6757-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story.
Leaving Brooklyn behind, Black math-whiz and puzzle lover Bree starts a new life in Florida, where she’ll be tossed into the deep end in more ways than one. Keeping her head above water may be the trickiest puzzle yet.
While her dad is busy working and training in IT, Bree struggles at first to settle into Enith Brigitha Middle School, largely due to the school’s preoccupation with swimming—from the accomplishments of its namesake, a Black Olympian from Curaçao, to its near victory at the state swimming championships. But Bree can’t swim. To illustrate her anxiety around this fact, the graphic novel’s bright colors give way to gray thought bubbles with thick, darkened outlines expressing Bree’s deepest fears and doubts. This poignant visual crowds some panels just as anxious feelings can crowd the thoughts of otherwise star students like Bree. Ultimately, learning to swim turns out to be easy enough with the help of a kind older neighbor—a Black woman with a competitive swimming past of her own as well as a rich and bittersweet understanding of Black Americans’ relationship with swimming—who explains to Bree how racist obstacles of the past can become collective anxiety in the present. To her surprise, Bree, with her newfound water skills, eventually finds herself on the school’s swim team, navigating competition, her anxiety, and new, meaningful relationships.
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-305677-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Elegiac and hopeful.
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out.
When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.
Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12933-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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