A fun, fresh take on a classic theme.
For one night Lynnfield Middle School hosts the biggest event in town, the seventh-grade dance.
The gym transforms into a thrilling stage for the members of all-girl band Heart Grenade. After winning the mall’s Battle of the Bands, Heart Grenade will be rocking live at the dance and on local TV. However, Latina lead singer Carmen’s cousin’s wedding is the same night. African-American backup singer Genevieve will take Carmen’s place, but she’s got butterflies building in her stomach. White drummer Tess is confident her night on stage will be perfect until drama erupts between her and her rival, Mariah, another white girl and would-be drummer. Mariah’s best friend, Ryan, had hoped he’d have a shot with her tonight but the Tess drama is a distraction. Shy, white Ellie is thrilled to attend the dance with her crush and even more grateful that her Korean-American stepsister, Seo-yeon (known as Ashlyn at school), will be babysitting for her. Ashlyn, though, couldn’t care less about babysitting. And Jade, likely white, can barely contain her nefarious glee. When Heart Grenade “totally robbed” her band at the mall contest, she decided that revenge was the only option. There’s no telling how this night will end with hearts, music, and friendship on the line. This eventful middle school dance is told from seven points of view by seven different writers. Under Malone’s editorship, they pull it off with seamless chemistry and strong character building.
A fun, fresh take on a classic theme. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8660-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
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
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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