Thirteen-year-old Abby Spencer learns that the father she’s never met is a Bollywood superstar and travels from Houston to Mumbai to meet him.
Abby has been stonewalled by her pie-shop–owning single mother when she’s asked about her dad, but hereditary concerns about a bad allergic reaction bring the matter to a head. Rather incredibly, Abby’s father, Naveen Kumar—a really nice guy who just happens to be the Brad Pitt of India—immediately accepts the situation and invites her to come to Mumbai to meet him and his loving but ailing mother. Besides the establishment of the likable Abby’s mostly smooth relationship with Kumar’s household and entourage, the rest of the story involves Abby’s reaction to India, her nascent romantic relationship with handsome Shaan and her difficulty remaining mum about the fact that she’s Kumar’s daughter. Unfortunately, nice is great in a girlfriend, but for characters in a novel, spice is necessary, and there’s not enough of it in Bajaj’s pleasant but bland first-person cross-cultural tale. Nevertheless, readers will want for Abby what she wants for herself—to find her place in her two families—and should be touched and satisfied by the story’s ending.
Culturally intriguing but dramatically dry, this story showcases the glamour and grit of Mumbai and gives readers an entertaining glimpse of backstage Bollywood. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-6363-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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A beautiful, evocative sophomore effort from Newbery honoree Wolk (Wolf Hollow, 2016).
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This book will make people want to run away to the Elizabeth Islands.
It’s the 1920s. Crow and her adoptive father, Osh, live in a tiny house on a tiny island off Cape Cod, but her descriptions make it seem strange and mysterious. The cottage is “built from bits of lost ships,” and it’s full of found treasures: “a pair of sun-white whale ribs arched over our doorway, a tarnished ship’s bell hanging from their pinnacle.” Every chapter in the book has a new mystery to be solved: why was Crow sent away in an old boat when she was a baby? Why is a fire burning on an abandoned island? Did Capt. Kidd really hide treasure nearby? But some readers will love Wolk’s use of language even more than the puzzles. Crow says her skin is “the same color Osh [makes] by mixing purple and yellow, blue and orange, red and green.” (The race of the characters isn’t always identified, but Osh says, “I came a long, long way to be here,” and his native language and accent make him sound “different from everyone else.”) The pacing of the book isn’t always as suspenseful as it should be. There are a few lulls, which the author tries to fill with heavy foreshadowing. But the mysteries—and the words that describe them—are compelling enough to send readers to the islands for years to come.
A beautiful, evocative sophomore effort from Newbery honoree Wolk (Wolf Hollow, 2016). (Historical fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-99485-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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