A richly satisfying exploration of the logic and determination with which children work to make things right. (Fiction 10-12)
When her unreliable mom is hired to cook and clean for a wealthy Alabama family, Mavis is hopeful they’ll stay long enough for her to have a best friend.
The Tullys’ daughter, Rose, is just Mavis’ age, and things looks promising, but the timid girl has been so browbeaten by her overbearing, haughty mother that she’s forgotten how to have fun. Mavis may be poor, but she has spirit enough for both of them. Rose spends most of her time with the elderly gatekeeper of Magnolia Estates, but ever since Mr. Duffy’s dog died he’s been slipping up at work, and Rose’s mother is anxious to have him fired. Mavis and Rose hatch a scheme to unite him with a stray dog they call Henry, who’s actually an escapee from Wonderland, a dog track, and who may be euthanized since his racing days are over. O’Connor, a master storyteller, presents this moving tale from the alternating viewpoints of the girls and Henry, using their unique narrative voices to craft an affecting story of loneliness and the redemptive powers of the human (and dog) spirit. The racial identities of Mr. Duffy and Mavis are kept deliberately vague (although she is pale-skinned on the cover, just like Rose), but it’s very clear that they are the underclass, evocatively contrasted against Mrs. Tully’s mistaken sense of superiority that even Rose learns to fight.
A richly satisfying exploration of the logic and determination with which children work to make things right. (Fiction 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-31060-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
PROFILES
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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