An uplifting caper for readers who don’t mind some emotional shortcuts.
Twelve-year-old Tacoma spends her evenings and weekends working at her parents’ Washington state truck stop, the Brake Fast.
Socially isolated due to her work schedule and some bullies at school, Tacoma becomes cautiously excited when a musician’s tour bus breaks down at the truck stop, stranding the driver’s 13-year-old son, Denver, along with the band. The two kids team up on a quest to retrieve a stolen Brake Fast memento from an adult bully named Crocodile Kyle and then buy groceries for Tacoma’s first-ever dinner menu at the Brake Fast Truck Stop, which serves only breakfast foods all day long. What begins as hijinks turns to melodrama as the pair absorb a third member—Tacoma’s mean classmate and Crocodile Kyle’s nephew, Hudgie—and each begins to reveal their personal challenges and traumas over the course of the day. The author treats issues such as anxiety, parental depression, and verbal abuse with sensitivity, though the kids divulge their vulnerabilities with implausible speed, blunting the power of the emotional arc. The rural Washington setting provides a wealth of quirky characters and locales, and the one-day time frame lends a satisfying immediacy to the kids’ adventures. It also requires a time warp, allowing three kids to cook a multicourse dinner for 18 people in just a couple of hours and leaving time for a public showdown with Crocodile Kyle. Physical descriptions are minimal; most characters are apparently white.
An uplifting caper for readers who don’t mind some emotional shortcuts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780063324909
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Not the most satisfying wrap-up, but it’s always good to spend time in the world of this series.
Beloved gorilla Ivan becomes a father to rambunctious twins in this finale to a quartet that began with 2012’s Newbery Award–winning The One and Only Ivan.
Life hasn’t always been easy for silverback gorilla Ivan, who’s spent most of his life being mistreated in captivity. Now he’s living in a wildlife sanctuary, but he still gets to see his two best friends. Young elephant Ruby lives in the grassy habitat next door, and former stray dog Bob has a home with one of the zookeepers. All three were rescued from the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. Ivan’s expanded world includes fellow gorilla Kinyani—the two are about to become parents, and Ivan is revisiting the traumas of his past in light of what he wants the twins to know. When the subject inevitably comes up, Applegate’s trust and respect for readers is evident. She doesn’t shy away from hard truths as Ivan wrestles with the fact that poachers killed his family. Readers will need the context provided by knowledge of the earlier books to feel the full emotional impact of this story. The rushed ending unfortunately falls flat, detracting from the central message that a complex life can still contain hope. Final art not seen.
Not the most satisfying wrap-up, but it’s always good to spend time in the world of this series. (gorilla games, glossary, author’s note) (Verse fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780063221123
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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