Henkes’s third-person narrative, in alternating chapters, presents the inner lives of Mitch, 12, and Spencer, ten. Over a few summer weeks, each wrestles with family travail in adjacent houses at Bird Lake. Mitch’s father has left the family for a new relationship, and Mitch and his mom retreat to his grandparents’ place to recover. Spencer, whose four-year-old brother drowned in the lake eight years before, returns with his parents and younger sister Lolly. At first, Mitch thinks of the Stone family as intruders—he has fantasized that the house next door could be his and his mom’s—and tries to unnerve them clandestinely. A misguided prank (he secretly unleashes the Stones’ dog and subsequently finds him) weighs heavily on Mitch. Yet, in tandem, the two boys gravitate toward friendship and find, despite their respective psychological distress, a satisfying, if potentially only summer-sized pocket of companionship and play. Through artfully observed details and perfectly pitched dialogue among the boys and clever Lolly, Henkes deftly locates Mitch’s pain and confusion, delivering a novel that’s quiet, nuanced and redemptive. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-147076-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
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
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read.
Tyler is the son of generations of Vermont dairy farmers.
Mari is the Mexican-born daughter of undocumented migrant laborers whose mother has vanished in a perilous border crossing. When Tyler’s father is disabled in an accident, the only way the family can afford to keep the farm is by hiring Mari’s family. As Tyler and Mari’s friendship grows, the normal tensions of middle-school boy-girl friendships are complicated by philosophical and political truths. Tyler wonders how he can be a patriot while his family breaks the law. Mari worries about her vanished mother and lives in fear that she will be separated from her American-born sisters if la migra comes. Unashamedly didactic, Alvarez’s novel effectively complicates simple equivalencies between what’s illegal and what’s wrong. Mari’s experience is harrowing, with implied atrocities and immigration raids, but equally full of good people doing the best they can. The two children find hope despite the unhappily realistic conclusions to their troubles, in a story which sees the best in humanity alongside grim realities.
Though it lacks nuance, still a must-read. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
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