Entrancing, magical, tragic, and uplifting.
A former foster child deals with love and loss and love again.
The hints are abundant. Twelve-year-old Ben, who has taken most of his life lessons from reading Star Wars stories, is the adoptive son of a loving and understanding but elderly lesbian. The charming mite of a stray dog that adopts the white boy is also old. Most worryingly, the endearingly depicted Halley, his fully rounded new best friend, also white and the daughter of a so-perceptive librarian and a funny magician, is undergoing chemotherapy. What could go wrong here? After he discovers his dead mom on the floor, Ben’s remote but well-intentioned aunt and abusive, bumbling uncle, the pair constantly at odds, become his reluctant new parents. What resilient, generous Ben, in a lifetime of foster care punctuated by loss, hasn’t learned is how to believe in the lasting power of love. It’s irrepressible Halley, her health faltering, and her gentle parents who teach him how to cope with loss without forgetting how to love, even when that love is perilous. Together he and Halley compose an otherworldly tale, The Magic Box, that’s a parable of their lives. Those familiar with Griffin’s books for teens know that Kleenex may be needed to successfully navigate this wrenching journey, which breathes fresh, warm life into what might have been an overworked cliché.
Entrancing, magical, tragic, and uplifting. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3816-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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
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
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