Although broken parents are common fodder these days, this debut story is a standout.
“It’s like trying to save the Titanic by bailing water with a teaspoon.” That’s how Annabelle regards her life ever since her mother’s hoarding took over the house and her father left.
The stuff is piled everywhere in the white family’s house: old milk bottles, stacked by long-ago expiration dates; egg cartons; ceiling-high piles of newspapers sorted by weather forecasts; and broken toys in huge mounds in Annabelle’s 10-year-old sister Leslie’s room. Her older brother’s room is stacked with exercise equipment and paint cans. Only Annabelle’s room is clean, but she keeps it that way by exercising a calming, obsessive ritual of prowling the exterior walls searching for potential maternal stashes. Annabelle’s managed to keep word from spreading, but finally Leslie waves the white flag by notifying their distant, controlling grandmother, who immediately intervenes by moving in and launching a running battle with Annabelle’s mom. Twelve-year-old Annabelle’s smart, perceptive voice is fresh and realistic, alternating between plucky determination to keep her broken family running and a vulnerable undercurrent of believable despair. Her evolving relationship with a classmate provides a tender counterpoint to her heartbreaking home situation. Well-drawn and sympathetic characters (even, eventually, Annabelle’s parents) drive this immersive tale that concludes with a satisfying but plausible hint of hope.
Although broken parents are common fodder these days, this debut story is a standout. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93198-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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