A finely drawn and cleanly written story that will give readers hope.
A tough kid earns a family.
Twelve-year-old Ashley Dalton, who prefers to be called Ash, has one refuge in the world: a walnut tree in the yard of her foster mother’s rental house, where she lives along with her foster mother’s volatile son, his girlfriend, and their baby, who shares a room with Ash. Middle school, where Ash gets bullied for being unfeminine in her clothing and appearance, is scary and threatening. And then, making things worse, her new social studies teacher assigns the class to draw family trees. Ash’s past is no one’s business but her own. Eventually, with the help of her friends Gentry Noble (a gentle boy who’s lost his own mother) and Joss Cruz (a supremely cool girl who’s also concealing family secrets)—along with adults who listen to Ash, appreciate her talents, and ask the students to consider what they don’t know—she finds the courage to confide in a teacher and her friends about the trouble she’s in. Gordon’s middle-grade debut is gritty, messy, and honest, with complex, nuanced characters navigating a realistically complex world that includes abuse, drug use, and homophobia. Ash’s simple request at the end—“I want to live with people who actually care about me”—feels earned, and attainable. Ash and Gentry read white, and Joss is cued Latine.
A finely drawn and cleanly written story that will give readers hope. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780374392055
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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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