Imagining something called “The Wild,” which might eat your shoes while living under your bed, might be easier for a 12-year-old than an adult. But The Wild doesn’t stay under Julie’s bed for long, and its identity emerges quickly for all readers. Once unleashed, it threatens to take over the entire community where fairy-tale characters live peaceful, ordinary lives in suburban Massachusetts. Set free by someone making a wish at the “Wishing Well Motel,” it now re-launches the characters into their stories. Julie, however, blames herself for setting the fairy-tale cycle in motion: She has wished that her mother not be her mother. She’s tired of being odd without knowing why, of entertaining the seven dwarves for dinner, of being picked up by Cindy in her orange Subaru and hanging out in the hair salon her mother, Zel, operates. Zel enters The Wild immediately to free the fairy-tale characters and stop its progression. Julie enters it to save her mother—and to learn her true identity and about the absent father she longs for. Deeper than most rewritten fairy tales, this existential story is chunked with big ideas about the fairy-tale genre, yet the story is lightened with touches that will connect with its audience. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59514-156-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
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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