A heartfelt narrative weighed down by important but underdeveloped messages.
“Every race matters. They all get me one step closer to being the kind of girl a person can never forget.”
Thirteen-year-old Texan Leta “Lightning” Laurel’s race is the 400-meter dash, and she has her mind set on winning the district championship. Winning gets her photo in the local paper, and maybe that will get her absentee father’s attention. But it’s hard to focus on running: She cares for her younger sister while her mom works two jobs and struggles to put food on the table. Adding to Leta’s stress, her closest childhood friend ditches her for the popular cheerleaders. With the arrival of new eighth grader Natalie, herself a successful 400-meter competitor, the stakes are even higher. Leta, who presents white, learns about her physical limits—and her own motivations—in her race to the finish line. Leta’s genuine first-person narration effectively captures the growing pains, embarrassment, and small joys to be found both on and off the track. The novel is bursting with topics that are authentic to Leta’s and her peers’ experiences, including anxiety, bullying, food insecurity, disordered eating, parental separation and divorce, poverty, gender inequality in sports, menstrual equity, and physical abuse. Yet the author’s efforts to fully develop them all feel as cramped as Leta’s feet in her too-small track shoes. Supportive adults, including Leta’s progressive coach and devoted, distance-running grandfather, bring warmth that lightens the heavy subject matter.
A heartfelt narrative weighed down by important but underdeveloped messages. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781665956277
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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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