Domestic kerfuffles weathered by plenty of love and sweet cajeta.
Growing pains afflict a prospective blended family when matriarch Tía Enriqueta announces that she won’t be attending the wedding.
Twins Raquel and Lucinda Mendoza and their soon-to-be stepsister, Juliette Viramontes, got past some rough patches in The Do-Over (2022), but several remain to be navigated in this sequel—particularly after Marcos and Sylvia, their respective parents, decide to move the wedding to the Viramontes family’s ancestral ranch in Mexico and Sylvia’s Tía Enriqueta digs in her heels, claiming that it’s all happening too quickly. How to, as the title frames it, win her over? Though mostly focusing on the family issue, Torres tucks new cousins and other relatives, cute goats to milk, a hidden treehouse, an old diary, and even a couple of secret passages into a fluid narrative inflected by the language, foods, and values of its Latine cast. The younger set gets together for delicious adventures in the kitchen as they concoct obleas, caramel sweets inspired by a secret family recipe. Meanwhile, Raquel and Enriqueta bond in mutual recognition that both are batalladora—tough. This bonding ultimately leads to a properly festive ceremony…and life-altering decisions for the three seventh graders as well. Torres again tells a warmhearted tale in which personalities clash and mesh on the way to a loving resolution.
Domestic kerfuffles weathered by plenty of love and sweet cajeta. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781338818901
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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
A warm bundle of holiday cheer.
In a funny, feel-good tale, 12-year-old twins separated at birth meet by chance and try to pull off a family switch during the December holidays.
The girls, who are cued white, agree that it would be a delicious prank, but each has a personal motive, too: Aviva Davis, who was adopted by a culturally Jewish mom and a Black dad who was raised Christian, wonders what it’s like to celebrate Christmas. Budding author Holly Martin, who was adopted by a white-presenting single mom, sees a golden opportunity to gather experiences for a school writing assignment about facing her fears. In a plot as sweet as a Hanukkah jelly doughnut and twisty as a Christmas cinnamon roll, the pair just manages to bail one another out of a string of sticky situations—both hilarious and otherwise. They both learn something of the customs and meaning of the two holidays while working through tears and laughter—not to mention conflicts sparked by their very different personalities. Everything culminates in a holiday performance at a local senior center that will have readers rising up to cheer them on. Though their history remains tantalizingly mysterious, for the protagonists, who narrate alternating chapters, it’s mission accomplished and more: Aviva emerges feeling more secure in her Jewish identity, while anxious Holly discovers unexpected depths of courage.
A warm bundle of holiday cheer. (song lyrics) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250360670
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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