At a Girls Who Code–type camp, seventh-grader Allie Navarro develops a new social-connections game she calls “Click’d.”
After she releases the mostly untested game at school in the fall, it’s an instant hit. Students all over campus are playing. Then Allie discovers that the game can accidentally release confidential information to other players. Entered in a teen coding competition at week’s end, she’s desperate to fix the bug, losing sight of the fact that the game has other unintended consequences as well. Classmate Nathan is also planning to compete. Less outgoing than Allie, he’s made coding the focus of his life. He could use a friend, but Allie has always regarded him as competition, not a soul mate. Even after he helps her with her programming issues, she remains suspicious of him. She has to (believably) stumble and fall before she finally begins to gain some needed wisdom and maturity. Though Latinx heritage is hinted at in her name, it doesn’t emerge beyond that. One of her coding friends is black; Nathan is white. Often the computer nerds in children’s literature are male; depicting a competent female (who is also not a social pariah) is a welcome twist, joining a little boomlet of similar books. Genial Allie’s disappointments are fully credible.
Entertaining and engaging, this effort may especially appeal to computer-savvy young teens. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-8497-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
15
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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