An ambitious invitation for young readers that delivers promise for all.
Wes Henderson wants to focus on championing his swag in middle school but instead confronts a larger challenge as his neighborhood is threatened by the forces of gentrification.
Giles debuts with a novel that provides a probing look into the complex topic of gentrification and its ever present reality for low-income urban Black neighborhoods. Wes, a Black boy and the only child of two community activist parents, would rather spend his time getting fresh to defend his fifth grade Best Dressed title than be out every weekend protesting in the hot sun. However, he’s beginning to notice the accumulating effects of neighborhood shifts; his longtime friend Kari’s family was just pushed out of their home, and there’s the arrival of new stores that ask you to “build-your-own burger” and “grind-your-own coffee.” The tensions are even beginning to affect his longtime crew as the friends navigate their own different positions. What shines throughout the book is the power of intergenerational community organizing, as the text does an admirable job of highlighting the practices and networks for defending one’s home, chosen family, and history. Younger readers may require support in decoding and connecting some of the complex concepts in this book; it could sit at the center of a transformative collective reading experience. The story echoes contemporary realities that, as its culmination indicates, take an entire community to confront, and it will undoubtedly push readers into action.
An ambitious invitation for young readers that delivers promise for all. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-17517-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2021
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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BOOK TO SCREEN
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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