This family story feels like a modern classic.
Nine-and-a-half-year-old budding author Cilla Lee-Jenkins returns with her newest work—a Classic, replete with Romance, Adventure, and Drama.
What with learning about Chinese wedding traditions in preparation for Auntie Eva’s wedding, trying to prevent a classmate from stealing her best friend, and helping her baby sister “find her destiny” (and learn to say “Cilla”), Cilla has no shortage of adventures for her second book. Some readers may already know Cilla from Tan’s first book, Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire (2017), and her effusive, humorous narration immediately sets newcomers at ease (“And even though my mom said there wasn’t anything for me to do, I was a BIG help anyway”). Cilla’s blended family reflects the reality of many children; her experiences as a multiracial child navigating different traditions with her Chinese grandparents and white grandparents ring true. Cantonese speakers will especially enjoy Cilla’s ardent efforts to speak the language. The book may be a bit long for some who might otherwise enjoy Cilla’s escapades, making it a cozier choice for a family read-aloud or a more tenacious young reader. Wulfekotte’s intermittent pencil-sketch illustrations add lightness and humor—perhaps leaving readers wishing there were more of them.
This family story feels like a modern classic. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-553-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sweetly low-key and totally accessible.
Billy Miller’s second-grade year is quietly spectacular in a wonderfully ordinary way.
Billy’s year begins with his worry over the lump on his head, a souvenir of a dramatic summer fall onto concrete: Will he be up to the challenges his new teacher promises in her letter to students? Quickly overshadowing that worry, however, is a diplomatic crisis over whether he has somehow offended Ms. Silver on the first day of school. Four sections—Teacher, Father, Sister and Mother—offer different and essential focal points for Billy’s life, allowing both him and readers to explore several varieties of creative endeavor, small adventures, and, especially, both challenges and successful problem-solving. The wonderfully self-possessed Sal, his 3-year-old sister, is to Billy much as Ramona is to Beezus, but without the same level of tension. Her pillowcase full of the plush yellow whales she calls the Drop Sisters (Raindrop, Gumdrop, etc.) is a memorable prop. Henkes offers what he so often does in these longer works for children: a sense that experiences don’t have to be extraordinary to be important and dramatic. Billy’s slightly dreamy interior life isn’t filled with either angst or boisterous silliness—rather, the moments that appear in these stories are clarifying bits of the universal larger puzzle of growing up, changing and understanding the world. Small, precise black-and-white drawings punctuate and decorate the pages.
Sweetly low-key and totally accessible. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-226812-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
A sweet and entertaining series opener about family and friendship.
Nina is worried that her best friend, Jay, might not be her best friend anymore.
Nina Soni has been best friends with Jay Davenport since before she was born. But when Jay’s cousins move to town, he has less and less time for Nina—so little time, in fact, that she wonders if they’re still best friends. Nina is so distracted that she forgets about her Personal Narrative Project, an assignment in which Nina is supposed to write about something interesting that’s happened to her. At first, Nina wonders how she’ll ever write the essay when her family—and, by extension, her life—is so boring. But when Jay announces that he’s going to write the best PNP ever, Nina sees his challenge as a way to recover their friendship. Sheth’s language is poetic in its simplicity, and her narratorial voice is a pleasure to read. The book particularly sparkles whenever Nina interacts with her small but tightknit family, especially when she has to rescue her quirky younger sister, Kavita, from endless scrapes. The conflict between Nina and Jay, however, feels forced and tangential to the story, which really centers on Nina’s personal narrative and her loving, albeit exasperating, relationship with her family. Both Nina and Jay are Indian American; she on both sides of her family and he through his mother (his father is white).
A sweet and entertaining series opener about family and friendship. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68263-057-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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