There are plenty of novels about kindly-but-oppressive dystopian societies in which a child has a designated future path;...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a society in which 13-year-olds are assigned careers must be in want of a savior.
Callie lives in the City, the sole enclave of humanity (she thinks). Like all 13-year-olds, Callie has a single authorized job. In their machine-free society, she's a computer: a numbers expert. Callie's so skilled that city officials come to learn from the patterns she finds "beautiful," though she does wonder if there's more to life. On the other side of the great forest bordering the City lies the Meadow, where Jeremy is a dreambender trainee. Unbeknown to the City dwellers, dreambenders monitor their sleeping minds, snuffing out dangerous tendencies, especially the most dreaded: music. Jeremy is the "shining star" and "greatest hope" of the dreambenders (in his own words, "an inquisitive genius"), but he won't bend Callie's dream, for he's taken by her sleeping thoughts of song. He's determined to topple the dreambender regime with the help of Callie and the friends they make in the woods (including a cognitively disabled dark-skinned mute). Blonde Callie and black-haired Jeremy are both evidently white, with characters of color relegated to secondary status. Between this and the poor worldbuilding that underlies the story, the novel makes a sad contrast to Kidd’s excellent Night on Fire (2015).
There are plenty of novels about kindly-but-oppressive dystopian societies in which a child has a designated future path; skip this one . (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1725-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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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Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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