A layered, emotionally resonant story.
A poignant tale about a girl and her cherished grandfather.
Living in Glasgow with Wai Gong, her maternal grandfather, Scottish Chinese Lizzie Chu doesn’t have the typical life of a 12-year-old. Lizzie’s mom died during childbirth, and her father was never in the picture. Now she’s a young caregiver, managing the house and school; Wai Gong hasn’t been himself since Grandma Kam died. Is his grief diminishing his interest in life and increasing his focus on Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion and mercy? When Lizzie’s Vietnamese Welsh friend Chi Pham appears dressed as Princess Leia for Comic Con, Wai Gong, seeing her flowing robes, mistakes her for the deity. Lizzie enlists Chi to play the role of Guan Yin in order to inspire Wai Gong to make the trip to the legendary Blackpool Tower Ballroom where he and Grandma Kam first met in the ’80s. It was their grandparents’ final, unfulfilled wish to return and dance the cha-cha again. Chan combines realities of Asian British life with stories from Chinese mythology, forming the backdrop for a chaotic, hilarious road trip to Blackpool with Lizzie, Wai Gong, Chi, Chi’s older brother (their driver), and Tyler, her other best friend. Just like the Monkey King in The Journey to the West, they overcome enormous obstacles to make this dream come true. Even more touching is Lizzie’s journey toward understanding her grandfather’s probable dementia and learning to ask for help.
A layered, emotionally resonant story. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5992-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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