An endearing, plucky girl endures and overcomes in this absorbing quick read.
A young girl braves daily hurdles and unwelcome life changes in Pollack’s middle-grade novel and series launch.
It’s not always easy for Jillian “Jelly Bean” Kramer to get noticed. The fourth-grader is the youngest of four children in her New Jersey household, but it’s her three brothers who hog their parents’ attention. While that’s long been the situation with her family, things aren’t going so great at school, either. Jelly Bean has a spectacularly bad day when she misses a chance at a speaking part in the upcoming Thanksgiving play simply for being tardy (her brothers’ fault, of course) and winds up in the principal’s office after allegedly disrupting the class. But that’s only a taste of how terribly everything has been going—her best friend, Taylor Alpert, has very recently turned mean in her attempts to cozy up to the most popular girl in their grade. Once Jelly Bean is “banished” from her regular lunchtime seat, she gets the sense that she has no friends. At least she’s got her fun-loving Uncle Jack at home, but he’s starting to spend more time with his fiancé, who isn’t an especially nice person. “All these new things keep happening,” Jelly Bean laments. “I liked everything better the old way. I can’t get used to everything new!” Now she’s a lonely girl who honestly feels that most people don’t like her and that no one at all cares about her. What she can do, however, is face each day and stay true to herself; maybe her life will show signs of perking up.
Pollack’s titular hero shines; she’s likable and relatable, an even blend of relatable worries and drama-queen moments. She cries when her beloved dog, Roger-Over, sprints out the front door, but she also schemes to get out of rehearsals by declaring she’s going to faint (“Your own daughter is about to pass out, and you don’t even act upset”). As frequently as she points out all that’s wrong in her life, Jelly Bean proves surprisingly resilient; she accepts people for who they are, even if an individual takes out their frustrations on her. While several characters are as mean-spirited as Jelly Bean claims, the narrative boasts an equal number of bright spots. Most notable is the scene-stealing Roger-Over, who’s pure joy in a furry package. The author breathes life into this cast, providing a varied assortment of characters with myriad dimensions, like the mixed-bag of Jelly Bean’s brothers—Sam is the nice one, Joel is the resident jerk, and Michael, the oldest, all but ignores his sister. Taylor doesn’t seem to be impressing anyone with her bid to be popular, and one outwardly warmhearted schoolmate may, sadly, be too weird for Jelly Bean’s comfort. This relatively short novel moves at a steady pace, taking Jelly Bean from one dilemma to the next.
An endearing, plucky girl endures and overcomes in this absorbing quick read.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 9781649793720
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Austin Macauley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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