A usually humorous author offers a lesson insufficiently disguised.
Can middle schoolers see beyond their looks?
When “the prettiest girl in the room,” Calista Getz, sprouts her first zit, it’s the beginning of a week of learning for the three eighth-grade narrators: queen-bee Calista, her still-loyal former best friend, Laura Corbett, and awkward Damian White. On Monday, Calista’s new friends Ella and Ellie tell her that she shouldn’t play soccer—at which she also excels. On Tuesday, Calista’s fumbling efforts to cover up the blemish lead to a rash from her mother’s concealer and a scar from the popped pimple. Worse, Damian, trying to hide his sweaty shirt (he has hyperhidrosis and sweats more than most people), accidentally gives her a bloody nose. On Wednesday, she learns that Ella and Ellie have connived to get handsome Patrick Toole to ask Ellie to the First Week Dance, though Calista was hoping he would ask her. Thursday brings an opportunity to pose with Patrick for a dance poster Damian is painting, and Friday, at the dance, the poster is revealed. Chronicled in short first-person chapters, this has the drama that characterizes eighth-graders’ lives but not enough insight into the real selves of any of these apparently white characters. It may leave readers wondering why they should care. Coovert supplies character-keyed chapter-head illustrations that help readers track narratorial changes.
Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-171-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Brava!
From award winner Telgemeier (Smile, 2010), a pitch-perfect graphic novel portrayal of a middle school musical, adroitly capturing the drama both on and offstage.
Seventh-grader Callie Marin is over-the-moon to be on stage crew again this year for Eucalyptus Middle School’s production of Moon over Mississippi. Callie's just getting over popular baseball jock and eighth-grader Greg, who crushed her when he left Callie to return to his girlfriend, Bonnie, the stuck-up star of the play. Callie's healing heart is quickly captured by Justin and Jesse Mendocino, the two very cute twins who are working on the play with her. Equally determined to make the best sets possible with a shoestring budget and to get one of the Mendocino boys to notice her, the immensely likable Callie will find this to be an extremely drama-filled experience indeed. The palpably engaging and whip-smart characterization ensures that the charisma and camaraderie run high among those working on the production. When Greg snubs Callie in the halls and misses her reference to Guys and Dolls, one of her friends assuredly tells her, "Don't worry, Cal. We’re the cool kids….He's the dork." With the clear, stylish art, the strongly appealing characters and just the right pinch of drama, this book will undoubtedly make readers stand up and cheer.
Brava! (Graphic fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-32698-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
SEEN & HEARD
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