Separated by divorce, two talented sisters come together in crisis. Thirteen-year-old Donni, the artist, lives with her father. Trisha, an aspiring writer, lives with their mom. But when the increasingly incorrigible Donni is suspended from sixth grade for cursing out the vice principal, Donni’s mother brings the girls together, enlisting Trisha—whom Donni dubs “Trisha the Perfect”—as tutor. The eighth-grader accepts the challenge, happy to spend time with her estranged sister and close the gap on loneliness. Despite the support of her family and the school psychiatrist, Donni’s progress is erratic; when the vice principal rejects the portrait she’s made as a peace offering, Donni loses control, believing that he is denying her the one thing that keeps her sane in the midst of change: her art. Then Donni runs out of class the day after reading Trish’s journal and discovering that she too is having trouble. Threatened with reform school, Donni admits her emotions to her mother who explains the psychological dimensions of Donni’s discipline problems to the vice principal. Soon, he commissions Donni to decorate his office with artwork. At the same time, Donni makes amends with Trisha, who she finally recognizes as an ally. Driven by Donni, the narrative alternates with Trisha, whose voice is differentiated by the font of her journal entries. Minor flaws aside, Springer deftly portrays the acute uncertainty of adolescence. But more information about the circumstances behind the divorce and the current state of affairs between the parents would help to explain Donni’s unrelenting angst. While the plot is obvious—a child acting out in hopes of drawing the parents together—the drama makes for utterly engaging reading. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8234-1544-9
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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