Timely, insightful, and highly recommended.
Burdened by contradictory expectations from her high-achieving, divorced parents, a quiet tween is challenged to assert herself.
Lilla’s parents, like many in their small college town, are academics. Her dad heads the art museum; her mom is an entomologist. Stellar seventh-grade test scores set Lilla on course for the prestigious magnet high school where students focus on either arts or STEM subjects. Weary of the constant pressure to excel, to pick a career path before she’s 13, Lilla fantasizes about attending public high school and pursuing interests beyond the career-focused specialization her parents have convinced themselves she wants, but she remains outwardly compliant. Her passivity is no secret to her friends Vivi and Knox. When Vivi chooses bravery for their summer goal, Lilla agrees to express her feelings honestly, without resorting to white lies or silence. She struggles to manage conflicting expectations for girls—to be simultaneously ambitious and competitive, feminine and emotionally yielding. While that’s exhausting enough, contending with sexism and street harassment along with her first crush proves downright paralyzing. Choosing never to hurt others’ feelings, Lilla realizes, means always prioritizing them over expressing her own (ruthless self-criticism is another trap). Vivi’s dad is Japanese and her mother is French Canadian; other major characters are White. With compassion, wry humor, and pinpoint accuracy, Parks weaves the multiple challenges facing adolescent girls into a compelling, seamless narrative.
Timely, insightful, and highly recommended. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7660-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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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