A poignant book about changing and growing friendships.
Following Songbird (2019), Laguna continues Jamila’s story in Australia, this time focusing on her relationships with her two best friends.
The story picks up six months after Jamila and her family left Kadhimiya, Baghdad, for Melbourne, Australia. Jamila is adjusting well to Australia and spending time with her best friend Eva. When she learns that Mina, her best friend from Iraq, is coming to Australia, she is excited to show her around and “share Australian sweets with her, milky ways and wagon wheels, and take her on the train to the city.” But after Mina gets to Australia, things do not go as Jamila thought they would, and her relationship with Eva changes. Mina is dealing with trauma from the war, and Jamila feels like she has to keep choosing between her two friends. Then Jamila and Eva learn that there will be no more choir, and Jamila comes up with a plan. Laguna weaves in Jamila’s and Mina’s memories of Iraq before the war as well as references to foods like samoon bread with sesame seeds and desserts such as halawat sha’riyya and klecha. Jamila’s thoughts, feelings, and struggles with friendship are real and honest; readers see glimpses of Eva’s and Mina’s lives through Jamila’s experiences. Jamila and Mina are Iraqi and Muslim; Eva’s race is not specified.
A poignant book about changing and growing friendships. (glossary of Arabic words) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-92226-875-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Text
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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
File under “laugh riot.”
A rogue spell-check program’s bid to transform all life-forms into that eminently useful office item, the paper clip, touches off a fresh round of lunar lunacy.
Predicated on the entirely reasonable premise that eliminating all spelling and grammar errors everywhere would logically lead to the necessity of exterminating carbon-based life in the universe, this third series entry combines high stakes with daffy banter and daring exploits. CheckMate—a chipper, jumped-up editing program—has invented the Transmogratron, a giant laser that will fulfill its ultimate goals in both the cyber world and “meatspace.” Facing challenges as random as prankster lunar unicorns and a disarmingly motherly Motherboard, scowling First Cat joins a motley crew of diversely carbon- and silicon-based allies, led by the pearlescent Queen of the Moon. They’re in a race to the finish—diverted occasionally by, for instance, a relentlessly punny comic-book interlude featuring a pair of literal and figurative Pool Sharks. They ultimately triumph thanks to teamwork and moxie. Following a celebratory party and toasts to “new friends…and steadfast comrades” (and, of course, “MEOW”), the story’s energetic, brightly colored panels close with a reveal of the next volume. (“I always hate it when comics end by announcing a sequel. SO CRINGE!” declares an authorial stand-in.) It can’t come too soon.
File under “laugh riot.” (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780063315280
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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