A thoughtful exploration of grief, family lore, and human connection.
Juniper Creedy and her friends embark on a desperate quest after her older brother goes missing in action in Afghanistan.
Juni has always known that her family, descended from the Brothers Grimm, is cursed: According to her grandmother Anya, the family’s extreme luck—both good and bad—comes from an encounter their famous ancestors had with a Greek witch. But despite her own brushes with fate, including lifelong asthma attacks, the curse doesn’t feel real to Juni until the Army delivers the news that Connor is missing. Now, her parents are distant and unreceptive to Juni’s conviction that Connor is still alive, but Anya shares new information with Juni, partly through first-person journal entries, about her own childhood and the curse. So when it’s time for the annual end-of-summer camping trip with her friends Mason and Gabby (chaperoned by Luca, Gabby’s older brother and Connor’s best friend), Juni requests a few additional stops in hopes of finding a witch and breaking the curse. Holczer’s clear, gentle prose allows the emotional and descriptive elements of the text to shine in this multilayered road-trip story, complete with flashbacks at key landmarks. While Juni’s Grimm ancestry isn’t critical to the plot, it underscores her faith in the fairy-tale elements that ultimately enable catharsis around Connor’s fate. Most characters are coded White; Gabby and Luca’s family is cued as Latinx.
A thoughtful exploration of grief, family lore, and human connection. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984813-99-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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