A poignant coming-of-age tale with a compelling mystery at its center.
In this debut middle-grade novel, a girl whose mother has left her makes a life-changing new friend.
It’s nearly a year since Melanie Harper’s mother disappeared. With her father, Melanie moved from Grayson to Fairview, where, in 1980, she’s now in the fifth grade at Buckminster Experimental School. She doesn’t fit in with most other kids and is a target for mean girls like Karen Wagner, who’s always trying to get a look at Melanie’s secret journal. Melanie’s artist father is preoccupied with his work, and she’s often lonely. Things change when a new girl suddenly appears in Melanie’s life. She asks Melanie to call her Sabrina, after the character Sabrina Duncan on Charlie’s Angels. Sabrina is “just about the ideal friend,” and through her encouragement, Melanie gains more social confidence. She stands up to Karen and begins a tentative friendship with Leanne, a girl in the bully’s circle who admires her: “You are different, but you’re just like yourself, when everyone is trying not to be.” Melanie even wins the role of Peter Pan in the school play, hoping that her mother—to whom she’s been sending coded postcards—will attend. When Karen gets hold of the secret journal, things fall apart, bringing Melanie to important new realizations. In her novel, Mathison provides an appealing hero who’s thoughtful, perceptive, and richly imaginative, able to perceive what others don’t: “There’s a door in the world, right there for anyone to see...standing open the whole time and a lifetime of mystery beyond.” Melanie’s emotions are affecting and compassionately described but not histrionic. The secret of her mother’s disappearance—and Sabrina’s arrival—embodies a creative psychological response to sorrow that provides surprises, though some readers may guess them before the end.
A poignant coming-of-age tale with a compelling mystery at its center.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73500-372-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Starr Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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