Though clearly well-intentioned, this middle-grade novel seems unlikely to find an enthusiastic audience.
Fifth-grader Penelope Bach records her thoughts and experiences in a series of letters to her unborn sibling.
Penny, a white girl being raised by two mothers in Oakland, California, tracks the performance of her hometown basketball team, anguishes over a school assignment, struggles with changing friendships, and records the progress of her mother’s pregnancy. As the months pass, she learns a lot about the Ohlone, the local Native American tribe with which her nonbiological mother, Sammy, is affiliated, while simultaneously trying to trace her biological parents’ family histories. She also deals with prejudice because of her two moms and sees firsthand the racism that her Jamaican best friend, Gabby, and Gabby’s older brother (Penny’s secret crush) face. While Rocklin tackles important and topical issues, Penny’s voice and characterization are underdeveloped and thus overwhelmed by the messages she delivers. Other characters are similarly flat, making it difficult to become invested in their interactions, and dialogue is often stilted. Limited description keeps the setting from coming to life, while emotions and reactions are listed rather than evoked. Knisley’s black-and-white spot drawings range from depictions of the developing fetus to Penny’s teacher’s novelty ties. Many add humor and interest but can’t compensate for the text’s flaws.
Though clearly well-intentioned, this middle-grade novel seems unlikely to find an enthusiastic audience. (author’s note, bibliography, list of organizations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2861-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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