Suspend disbelief and enjoy this adventure.
Sometimes, time travel is necessary.
Eleven-year-olds Roya Alborzi and Amin Lahiri live in 2024 but also, briefly, in 1949, 1974, and 1999. Iranian American Roya’s mom is the superintendent of their 100-year-old apartment building, which is dubbed the Queen of Ocean Parkway; Amin’s family are new residents. Roya helps her mom and observes the tenants, writing about them for her podcast. One day, she overhears married couple Stefanie (who’s cued Black) and Katya (who’s Russian American) speaking about a cursed fortune—and soon after, Katya is gone. Stefanie explains to Roya and Amin, who’s of South Asian descent, that at 25-year intervals, members of Katya’s family, the Petrovs, have received fortunes but also disappeared after visiting the family’s fortunetelling machine at Coney Island. And there begins an amazing adventure. Using the original fortune to guide them, the intrepid duo finds Grandmother’s Predictions, the waxwork machine, which tells them they have one chance to save Katya. Grandmother also sends them time traveling into the past, where they meet other vanished Petrov women. Roya also hopes that she can make a change in the past that would save her father from dying. Although the plot contains sometimes-confusing twists, turns, magic, coincidences, and unforeseen consequences, the resolution is entirely original, and the characters are distinct individuals whose worries, quirks, and foibles will engage readers’ sympathies. The sights, sounds, and atmosphere of Brooklyn are integral to the proceedings and enhanced by Lugo’s illustrations.
Suspend disbelief and enjoy this adventure. (family tree) (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809792
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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