A powerful, vibrant, and empowering celebration of an important milestone.
Sixteen short stories and poems from well-known and award-winning authors explore how young people experience and celebrate their periods.
The protagonists in this excellent, accessible middle-grade collection are all tweens and teens who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color with different cultural and faith-based beliefs, traditions, and reservations about their periods. Christina Soontornvat’s sweet and funny opening story, “The Rules of the Lake,” places a sixth grader’s first period during a much-anticipated field trip to a lake. In Ibi Zoboi’s touching “Bloodline,” 12-year-old Adjoa participates in a New Moon Rebirth ceremony in which she receives a special gift passed down from mothers to daughters in her family. Erin Entrada Kelly’s “Mother Mary, Do You Bleed?” follows a Filipina American Catholic girl who contemplates whether Jesus’ mother also had her period. While most of the stories are heartwarming and emphasize renewal and rest, the authors also delve into how their characters deal with challenges like sexism, racism, microaggressions, immigration, religion, deadnaming (one character is nonbinary), addiction, divorce, and grief. Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s emotionally resonant “Ofrendas,” for example, features three sisters, 10, 12, and 13, reeling in the aftermath of their mother’s sudden death. This is a memorable anthology featuring uniformly strong entries from broadly diverse voices that delve into the subject matter in ways ideally suited to the target audience.
A powerful, vibrant, and empowering celebration of an important milestone. (letter from the editors, resources) (Anthology. 9-13)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1634-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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