An enticing, broadly appealing blend of Puerto Rican mythology and relationship-driven adventure.
A girl and her new friends are on a mission to save a chupacabra from harm.
It’s Violeta’s first time in Puerto Rico, and she is excited to help Abuelita reopen her beloved restaurant after Hurricane Maria. But none of her family members let her help, saying that she’s “only a kid once” and should go have fun. Luckily, she meets local kids Diego, whose mother is the butcher who supplied Abuelita’s restaurant, and Lorena, whose uncle is a monster hunter. Violeta is a bit socially awkward, and they become her first real friends ever. Something has been killing the animals Diego’s mother needs for her butcher shop, and the friends, convinced it’s a chupacabra, band together to find it—though Violeta is initially skeptical that they even exist. However, after a young chupacabra gets caught in a steel-jaw trap while protecting her, Violeta vows to keep Chupie, as she names him, safe from the smugglers who deal in mythical creatures. Ortiz expertly weaves Puerto Rican culture and lore into themes of familial love and friendship difficulties. When differing beliefs test the bonds between Violeta, Diego, and Lorena, readers will find nuanced, realistic treatment of their anger, frustration, and sadness. Garcia’s illustrations leap off the page with a vibrancy that evokes island life and shows the diversity of skin tones and hair textures found there. Violeta’s father reads white.
An enticing, broadly appealing blend of Puerto Rican mythology and relationship-driven adventure. (field guide) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780062950284
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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