A lyrical and sensitively rendered coming-of-age tale.
In former Pixar animator Barillaro’s debut novel, a girl must spend the summer at her grandparents’ Canadian island house when her mother’s pregnancy turns risky.
Although Ava Amato, 11, loves the island, this time she’s preoccupied with worries. Are the twins, in utero, more important than her mother’s life? When Ava witnesses a woodpecker’s death, she believes she is cursed, especially after Nonna tells her that a bird in the house is said to foretell death. Ava makes a deal with the dead bird: Her mother must survive even if the twins don’t. In an effort to stave off the curse, she rescues two robin eggs she finds and raises the babies, with her grandmother’s help. She eventually opens up about the deal to Cody MacDonald, an 11-year-old boy visiting the lake with his dad after his parents’ recent divorce. Though initially she finds him brash, a friendship slowly sparks, and when a perilous situation arises during a big storm, Ava must summon her swimming skills and courage to save the day. Warm intergenerational relationships, strongly drawn characters, lyrical descriptions of nature, and nuanced depictions of Ava’s worries create an engrossing read that explores the boundary between childhood and adolescence. Ava is of Italian and Korean heritage; Cody presents White. Barillaro's occasional, delicate watercolors and vignettes in the margins accompany this quietly powerful story.
A lyrical and sensitively rendered coming-of-age tale. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781536224542
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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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