A heroine struggles to find her way back from despair and anger to joy and acceptance in this highly relatable tale for...
A young girl, wanting things back the way they used to be before her mother died, pins her hopes on a wishing well in this debut middle-grade novel.
Molly Bell’s beloved father has just remarried. The 11-year-old girl, still grieving her mother’s death two years before, feels cross and abandoned as Dad and her stepmom, Faith, go on their honeymoon. They leave the tween and Faith’s 6-year-old son, Henry, in the care of Molly’s grandparents on their farm. Although Molly tries to make the best of it and finds comfort working outdoors, she resents her grandparents’ attention to Henry and can’t untangle her emotions, feeling unloved and unlovable. She has compounded her unhappiness by giving up the sport she excelled at—soccer—due to misplaced guilt. A remote old wishing well on the property becomes the focus of her dreams (“It looked ancient, like old ruins that she had just discovered. It was as if Molly had been transported to a far away place in time. The bricks and stones were covered with overgrown weeds, making the well seem like it was almost alive”). She wishes for her mother, a best friend, and a life without Henry and Faith. In unexpected ways, some of her wishes come true. But does Molly actually hold the key to her own happiness? Geraghty clearly respects her tween audience, inviting empathy for each character with touching and realistic revelations of what lies underneath Henry’s brattiness, for instance, and Grandpa’s abruptness. Helping Molly heal are a lonely dog and the girl’s growing awareness of the vulnerabilities of others (including Grandpa, who lost his leg and his best friend in Vietnam). That Molly finds her way through turmoil is predictable, but she also recognizes the impact of her self-pity and rage. The author shapes Molly’s journey with a deft and informed touch while deepening the narrative with vivid imagery: “Grandpa Cody gazed out his passenger side window, his leathery skin illuminated by the glow of the sunrise and his long grey ponytail waving gently in the breeze. A slow and hearty country song played on the radio.”
A heroine struggles to find her way back from despair and anger to joy and acceptance in this highly relatable tale for tweens.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5410-3400-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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