A compelling tale of teenage depression handled with humor and sensitivity.
In Ritchey’s (The Never Prayer, 2012) powerful YA novel, a teenage boy flirts with death as he struggles to find meaning in life.
Jim Dillenger—JD to his friends—lives an unremarkable upper-middle-class life in suburban Denver. He’s a gifted student, but he spends most of his time getting high with his apathetic group of friends. His parents’ crumbling marriage and the recent death of his grandfather have left him bitter and ready to end it all. He’s not great at keeping his suicidal aspirations a secret, and soon, the entire high school is betting on whether or not he’ll kill himself. It’s a powerful take on an all-too-relatable subject for teenage readers. JD is a typical snarky adolescent—he describes the school counselor as “spelunking down into middle-age”—and he’s unsatisfied by what he perceives as his mundane existence. He floats through life, lacking real connection to the people around him, until he finally meets an unlikely group of friends who try and pull him out of his malaise. This ragtag bunch includes an octogenarian neighbor with keen insight, a drug-dealing dropout with higher aspirations, and a pair of Christian girls whose beliefs are, at first, highly offensive to the staunchly agnostic Jim. These richly drawn, beautifully complex characters, and the relationships they forge with JD, form the novel’s backbone. The first-person prose is acerbic, witty and at times achingly poignant. The novel deftly handles issues of religion, balancing JD’s cutting appraisals of what he perceives as hypocrisy with gentler voices that display the power of spirituality without seeming sanctimonious. Although JD’s musings are at times whiny and self-indulgent, he’s a relatable character throughout—flawed but trying to find purpose. His keen perceptions of others and their motives, coupled with his sensitivity toward underdogs, make him a character to root for. Overall, the subject matter may make this a dark read for younger teens, but it’s a story to which many will connect and in which they may ultimately find hope.
A compelling tale of teenage depression handled with humor and sensitivity.Pub Date: April 3, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Courtney Literary
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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