Jarrett’s frank view of the inner-city perils he faces is optimistically balanced by the strengths offered by family,...
Booth offers a glimpse of gritty inner-city life for a middle-grade audience through the eyes of 11-year-old Jarrett.
Jarrett’s failing summer school, making an ignominious repetition of sixth grade seem all too likely. His mother, fine at nurturing a long series of foster babies, is surprisingly oblivious to his floundering attempts to manage the schoolwork and his resulting discouragement, an emotional distance she also maintains with strong male role model Terrence, her boyfriend. Then she takes in Kevon, mature beyond his 12 years, and his toddler sister, Treasure. Jarrett resentfully shares his room and life with Kevon, but he also spies on him, discovering much about his foster brother’s mysterious, unhappy past. At the same time, he and best friend Ennis are cleverly crafting a horror film trailer at the community center that plays a major, positive role in local kids’ lives. Ennis is exploring his growing realization that “I don’t like girls, and I don’t think I ever will,” a revelation Jarrett sensitively accepts, in sharp, not fully explained contrast to his increasingly bitter, self-indulgent conflict with Kevon. The many plotlines keep the narrative brisk, enhanced by believable dialogue and nicely rounded characters, even though their motivations don’t always feel fully justified.
Jarrett’s frank view of the inner-city perils he faces is optimistically balanced by the strengths offered by family, friends and his community. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-22496-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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