Wry commentary and schoolboy machinations lighten but don’t mask the sour tone, and Sister Angelica’s free pass will likely...
An underachieving sixth-grader plots to “murderlate” a bullying nun in this darkly comic semiautobiographical novel.
The author claims it all happened, and he hasn’t changed any of the names either. Joining his 61 overwhelmingly white New Jersey classmates on the first day, Jim is singled out by Sister Angelica Rose, who treats his academic efforts with scorn and his every action with suspicion. Fueled also by the way she repeatedly puts his friend Philip, who stutters, on the spot in class, Jim’s anger swells to rage, and with a group of classmates he concocts an elaborate get-back prank. Meanwhile, the 1958-59 school year carries on through memories of school food (“The first item offered was always the brown soup”), a memorable visit from a black Sister of Charity who works with lepers in Hawaii, and a stage production in which Jim wears a banana suit and leads a dancing corps of similarly clad second-graders. Though the author puts his putative self in a good light at the end with a last-moment change of heart about the prank and, thanks to determined volunteer tutelage from a female classmate, improved study habits, sudden belated efforts to give Sister Angelica a few redeeming qualities come off as perfunctory at best.
Wry commentary and schoolboy machinations lighten but don’t mask the sour tone, and Sister Angelica’s free pass will likely leave readers feeling cheated. (Historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-78677-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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IN THE NEWS
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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Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
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