Short but powerful, with edge-of-your-seat suspense, this is one journey that should remain in readers’ memories.
A 12-year-old girl tries to fight off hungry wolves in this survival story.
Living in rural Alaska, Sloan doesn’t do well in school but already excels as a hunter. However, after spending five days lost in the woods several years earlier, she is deaf in one ear and fears being alone. Her father tries to toughen her up by leaving her alone while he takes a trip into town, but a neighbor’s accident means Sloan, her teacher, a friend, and his bad-guy dad must take her to town for a doctor. The group (all of whom appear to be white) ventures into the winter woods without adequate supplies and almost immediately realizes that the local wolf pack is following them. Although wolves rarely attack humans, these have been cut off from their natural prey and clearly see the humans as food. With far too little ammo, Sloan and her party must outrun and outwit the wolves if they are going to make it through to safety. Scott has done her research on wolves (as detailed in her author’s note) and writes from a naturalist’s perspective, never demonizing them but portraying them as highly dangerous nevertheless. Her insights into Sloan’s insecurities will ring true to many readers, while others will just enjoy the survival story.
Short but powerful, with edge-of-your-seat suspense, this is one journey that should remain in readers’ memories. (Adventure. 8-14)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-04358-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
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
PROFILES
Sweetly magical.
Seven-year-old Grace knows a great many words, but she can’t bring herself to string them together on paper.
In her eyes, this gift is unique to her writer aunt, Lily, with whom she spends her afternoons. Lily, however, has found herself bereft of ideas, and out of desperation she puts out an ad for a writing assistant. Enter Rex: a dog whose apparent oddities cleverly conceal a magic that, while unexplained, is quietly remarkable. Rex inspires Lily almost immediately, and the two find happiness in their new partnership. Similarly, Rex inspires Grace to turn her words into stories. Her reservations will feel familiar to any fledgling pen-pusher: not knowing how to write what she feels, how to start, or how to press on. Those reservations extend into her everyday life, as it fills and changes in ways she never foresaw, but her small network—loving (if busy and often absent) parents, the wondrous Rex, Lily and her writing group, the encouraging teacher Ms. Luce, and steadfast, unflappable Daniel, Grace’s best friend—remains by her side throughout her writer’s journey. MacLachlan spins from simple words an enigmatic, gentle, but perhaps too succinct tale. While Grace’s first-person narration doesn’t quite ring true to her young age, (a lack of contractions makes the prose oddly formal), charmingly scratchy pencil sketches scattered throughout mitigate this alienating effect. The only physical descriptions to be found are attached to the animal characters.
Sweetly magical. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294098-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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