A delightful read.
Twelve-year-old Alba Green is sent to Barcelona to live with her estranged grandmother.
Ever since she was a little girl, Alba has been running away. She always returned home to her cold, indifferent mother and abusive father, though, because she had nowhere else to go. When Alba’s mother sends her away to Barcelona to live with the maternal grandmother she hasn’t seen since she was small, thanks to her father’s controlling behavior, Alba at first meets her Abuela Lola’s warmth and kindness with suspicion. Slowly, however, she begins to accept her new reality, making friends and learning to bake bread with the owner of the local bakery. Despite feeling lost and unsure of herself, Alba grows in confidence—not only in terms of her gender-neutral personal style, which her parents disapproved of, but also in her passion for bread-making—and she begins to carve out small moments of happiness for herself. Everything comes to a halt when an unexpected visitor arrives in Barcelona and Alba learns her favorite bakery is in jeopardy. Layered with explorations of topics such as family dynamics, abuse, and identity, Alba’s first-person narrative is one of growth, forgiveness, and acceptance. Vivid descriptions of people, places, aromas, and food bring to life a colorful and beautiful multicultural neighborhood in Spain where English, Spanish, Catalan, Tagalog, and Mandarin intermingle. Alba is one-quarter Spanish, one-quarter Filipina, and presumably half White.
A delightful read. (glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-31423-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Quirky and imaginative—postmodern storytelling at its best.
Friendly curiosity and a gift for naming earn a polar bear an assortment of (mostly animal) friends, adventures, mishaps, and discoveries.
Arriving at a northern ocean, Duane spies a shipwreck. Swimming out to investigate, he meets its lone occupant, C.C., a learned snowy owl whose noble goal is acquiring knowledge to apply “toward the benefit of all.” Informing Duane that he’s a polar bear, she points out a nearby cave that might suit him—it even has a mattress. Adding furnishings from the wreck—the grandfather clock’s handless, but who needs to tell time when it’s always now?—he meets a self-involved musk ox, entranced by his own reflection, who’s delighted when Duane names him “Handsome.” As he comes to understand, then appreciate their considerable diversity, Duane brings out the best in his new friends. C.C., who has difficulty reading emotions and dislikes being touched, evokes the autism spectrum. Magic, a bouncy, impulsive arctic fox, manifests ADHD. Major Puff, whose proud puffin ancestry involves courageous retreats from danger, finds a perfect companion in Twitch, a risk-aware, common-sensical hare. As illustrated, Sun Girl, a human child, appears vaguely Native, and Squint, a painter, white, but they’re sui generis: The Canadian author avoids referencing human culture. The art conveys warmth in an icy setting; animal characters suggest beloved stuffed toys, gently reinforcing the message that friendship founded on tolerance breeds comfort and safety.
Quirky and imaginative—postmodern storytelling at its best. (Animal fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3341-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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