by Willo Davis Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2003
Amanda Jane has been called Rebel since she was two. At 14 (and nearly six feet tall), she’s delighted to spend part of her summer in Seattle helping her unconventional Gram ready an old Victorian house for college-age boarders. Gram’s friend and partner in homesteading is Vi, who has brought along her grandson. He’s not only Rebel’s age, he’s 6 foot 6 and named Moses. Moses’s video camera captures a robbery-in-progress at the local deli, and that sparks a series of events involving counterfeit money and Moses’s Irish wolfhound. Showing the rooms between bouts of housepainting enables Rebel and Moses to trace who the perps might be, and Rebel’s independent streak keeps the more sensible Moses from calling the police until it is almost too late. Rebel is clearly checking Moses out in a big way, and their byplay is rather more interesting than the contrived plotline. The possibility of a European tour with both grandmothers and the teen duo leave readers open for sequels. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85073-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
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by Willo Davis Roberts & illustrated by Karen Cipolla
by David Levithan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2021
A thought-provoking title for sophisticated readers.
A missing boy returns from another world. Will anyone believe his story?
When 12-year-old Aidan goes missing, his family and community members search everywhere in their small town. Things progress from worrying to terrifying when Aidan doesn’t turn up. No note. No trace. Not even a body. Six days later, Aidan’s younger brother, Lucas, finds Aidan alive in the attic they’d searched many times before. Aidan claims he was in a magical world called Aveinieu and that he got there through a dresser. While everyone around the brothers searches for answers, Lucas gets Aidan to open up about Aveinieu. Lucas, who narrates the story, grapples with the impossibility of the situation as he pieces it all together. Is any part of Aidan’s story true? YA veteran Levithan’s first foray into middle grade is a poignant tale of brotherly love and family trauma. The introspective writing, funneled through a precocious narrator, is as much about what truth means as about what happened. Though an engaging read for the way it makes readers consider and reconsider the mystery, the slow burn may deter those craving tidy resolutions. Bookish readers, however, will delight in the homages to well-known books, including When You Reach Me and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The cast defaults to White; the matter-of-fact inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters is noteworthy.
A thought-provoking title for sophisticated readers. (Mystery/fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984848-59-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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by David Levithan ; illustrated by Dion MBD
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by Karen Romano Young ; illustrated by Jessixa Bagley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 2020
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist.
This is the way Pearl’s world ends: not with a bang but with a scream.
Pearl Moran was born in the Lancaster Avenue branch library and considers it more her home than the apartment she shares with her mother, the circulation librarian. When the head of the library’s beloved statue of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is found to be missing, Pearl’s scream brings the entire neighborhood running. Thus ensues an enchanting plunge into the underbelly of a failing library and a city brimful of secrets. With the help of friends old, uncertainly developing, and new, Pearl must spin story after compelling story in hopes of saving what she loves most. Indeed, that love—of libraries, of books, and most of all of stories—suffuses the entire narrative. Literary references are peppered throughout (clarified with somewhat superfluous footnotes) in addition to a variety of tangential sidebars (the identity of whose writer becomes delightfully clear later on). Pearl is an odd but genuine narrator, possessed of a complex and emotional inner voice warring with a stridently stubborn outer one. An array of endearing supporting characters, coupled with a plot both grounded in stressful reality and uplifted by urban fantasy, lend the story its charm. Both the neighborhood and the library staff are robustly diverse. Pearl herself is biracial; her “long-gone father” was black and her mother is white. Bagley’s spot illustrations both reinforce this and add gentle humor.
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist. (reading list) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6952-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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