An honest coming-of-age story with extra appeal for music lovers.
A seventh grader and her friends form a band. Will it all come together?
When Lucy Sutcliffe comes across her parents’ old vinyl records, it’s the start of Beatlemania for the young drummer. Inspired by the Fab Four, Lucy and her best friends, Vanessa Takahashi and Rupa Khanna, are three-fourths of the way toward having a rock band. They just need a guitar player—and classmate Georgianna Birk might be it. While Lucy bonds quickly with the new member, the rest of the band does not click as easily. Beginning in the fall of 2012 and taking place over the course of the school year, readers see all the day-to-day ups and downs of middle school life. Brinkman deftly captures how friendships ebb and flow. In addition to changing friendship dynamics and tensions, family is a strong focus, and bridging it all and providing comfort is music. Snippets from The Beatles’ catalog and other classics often reinforce the narrative. The vibrant color palette of Chiki’s art feels contemporary while also evoking the 1960s. Effective, dynamic use of panel variations and white space complement Brinkman’s text. Lucy and Georgianna present White; Vanessa and Rupa are cued as Asian.
An honest coming-of-age story with extra appeal for music lovers. (afterword, soundtrack) (Graphic fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62672-721-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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