A potentially useful resource for kids struggling with loss, change, and letting go.
Maggie, 12, protects herself from loss and change by hoarding; it’s not going well.
Maggie dates her anxiety from the day her nana, suffering from dementia, failed to recognize her. Now that her parents are fostering an infant destined for adoption, Maggie dreads the day they must give little Izzie up. Maggie saves both traditional mementos and detritus (rocks, candy wrappers, used milk cartons) as aides memoire, insurance against forgetting. She’s upset when her dad, who coaches the all-girl trapshooting team she loves, brings in a boy. Kind, intelligent Maggie, who attaches easily, finds change and letting go a struggle. Her school locker and hidden boxes hold an increasingly out-of-control collection. Her uncharacteristic fury when her boxes are discovered prompts her parents to seek professional help for her with a cognitive behavioral therapist. Supported by family and friends, Maggie charts her progress in letting go. Despite challenges, this white, middle-class, Jewish family is exemplary. Her busy working parents always have time for Maggie; her brothers—teenage Dillon and Charlie, 6—are remarkably understanding. The writing is lucid and intelligent, but theme, syntax, and vocabulary—though not page count—seem crafted for the younger edge of the target range, and Maggie herself reads younger than 12. Pediatric hoarding, like adoption and fostering, is portrayed sensitively, but this challenging condition (causes, comorbidities, and uncertain prognosis) may be harder to resolve than suggested.
A potentially useful resource for kids struggling with loss, change, and letting go. (author’s note, playlist, psychologist’s note, experts consulted) (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-30821-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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Readers will enjoy this sequel from a plot perspective and will learn how to play-act a trial, though they may not engage...
This sequel to The Lemonade War (2007), picking up just a few days later, focuses on how the fourth graders take justice into their own hands after learning that the main suspect in the case of the missing lemonade-stand money now owns the latest in game-box technology.
Siblings Evan and Jessie (who skipped third grade because of her precocity) are sure Scott Spencer stole the $208 from Evan’s shorts and want revenge, especially as Scott’s new toy makes him the most popular kid in class, despite his personal shortcomings. Jessie’s solution is to orchestrate a full-blown trial by jury after school, while Evan prefers to challenge Scott in basketball. Neither channel proves satisfactory for the two protagonists (whose rational and emotional reactions are followed throughout the third-person narrative), though, ultimately, the matter is resolved. Set during the week of Yom Kippur, the story raises beginning questions of fairness, integrity, sin and atonement. Like John Grisham's Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer (2010), much of the book is taken up with introducing courtroom proceedings for a fourth-grade level of understanding. Chapter headings provide definitions (“due diligence,” “circumstantial evidence,” etc.) and explanation cards/documents drawn by Jessie are interspersed.
Readers will enjoy this sequel from a plot perspective and will learn how to play-act a trial, though they may not engage with the characters enough to care about how the justice actually pans out. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-27967-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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