Sweetly underscores friendship as a lifeline to self-acceptance.
Four seventh graders help each other find confidence.
After struggling to fit in, Tasha, Billie, Raelynn, and Claire finally found their people at summer camp. But now, they must separate and return to their own challenging realities. Talented hockey player Billie longs to pursue theater, but pressure from his dad holds him back. Claire struggles with shame over her family’s financial hardships and anxiety caused by her father’s volatile anger. Raelynn, who loves gaming but knows it won’t make her popular, is tormented by sibling rivalry and her fraternal twin sister’s rejection. Tasha feels insecure and resentful as her adoptive dads add a recently orphaned niece and her destructive dog to their family. Though their situations differ, the friends are on parallel journeys. Can they find the courage to tackle new experiences and relationships and ultimately be their true selves? Thankfully, they’ve got each other…plus the hot pink feather boa they found on their last night of camp, which they share through the mail whenever one of them needs extra luck. Readers may find wisdom in the validation and vulnerability within their group texts, and they’ll root for Team Canteen as they discover ways to express their feelings and personalities. The chapters rotate among the main characters’ points of view, proceeding through the school year until it’s time to reunite at camp. Raelynn reads Black, and the other leads are cued white.
Sweetly underscores friendship as a lifeline to self-acceptance. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781645952565
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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