A pleasurable balance of original and satisfying.
Two girls navigate the slippery ice of tween friendship.
Twelve-year-old Izzy is no longer best friends with Phoebe. Instead, Phoebe has attached herself to the popular (but mean) Daphne, and Daphne makes a point of excluding Izzy. To make matters worse, Izzy’s parents inform her that for financial reasons they will be moving to the apartment over their garage for a week because they’ve rented their house out to a family from out of town. This family also has a 12-year-old daughter, Wren, and they want to be close to the hospital where their 4-year-old is having surgery. At the book’s beginning, the girls’ stories are told in alternating third-person chapters integrated so well that when the two ultimately intertwine it is both natural and fresh. Wren, unlike Izzy, isn’t concerned with friendships or lack thereof. Wren has a focus and a passion: figure skating. And she is not happy to leave her practice rink four weeks before the sectionals competition to come with her family—though she feels bad about that. Wren and Izzy inevitably meet, but their budding friendship hits a snag, and it’s not certain if either girl can find the courage to make amends. Wren and Izzy have depth and nuance that give their stories vitality and believability, but the mean-girl storyline is run-of-the-mill (although the getting even part is fun). All characters read as White.
A pleasurable balance of original and satisfying. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-274862-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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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