A warm testament to the healing power of mutual respect—and doughnuts.
Trust and doughnuts get two longtime besties over a deep rift in the wake of a traumatic accident.
Dani lives and breathes baseball—but after achieving the ultimate triumph of making it onto an otherwise all-boy middle school team, a camper explosion leaves her with a broken leg, a concussion, and serious nerve damage. Her best friend, Eric, dragged her to safety, but he is tortured by guilt because, having a famously unreliable memory, he wonders if he forgot to turn the stove off. Was this disaster on their annual camping trip all his fault? Swartz skillfully tracks several emotional arcs in her two sixth graders through their alternating voices as Eric’s eventual agonized confession creates a break that drives both well-realized protagonists to fasten onto (and be disappointed by) new friends before realizing their mistake and seeking to mend fences. Eric turns out to be better at this than his tough-minded but inarticulate friend. His MO involves talks with God and bringing doughnuts to social encounters. Dani, her all-consuming determination to heal fast enough to rejoin the team that season only partially dimmed by setbacks, has guilt of her own to overcome for failing to meet him halfway. Sensitive readers will understand what neurodivergent Eric means when he declares “I see stuff differently” as a superpower. The cast reads white; Eric is cued Jewish.
A warm testament to the healing power of mutual respect—and doughnuts. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780593483664
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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