A fun, thoughtful story about making friends and adjusting to change.
A group of seventh graders help a new girl find her missing journal in Jones’ middle-grade novel.
A new school year is starting at Kentland Junior High School, and among the incoming students is Avery, who’s just moved to the suburb with her parents, who wanted their daughter to have a well-rounded education with a diverse student body. Avery is smart and, according to her mother, “an independent thinker,” but she has trouble making friends. This changes when her classmate Skylar invites her to sit with her and her pal Natalie during lunch. Skylar is confident and funny, and she’s had to take on more responsibility around her house since her mother died. Natalie is more reserved, but she’s determined to challenge herself and connect with new people. When Avery loses her private journal at the school library, her new pals help her in her search. Skylar recruits her practical friend Damien, whose mother is in the Army and currently deployed. He, in turn, ropes in his friend Chris, whose older brother has just left for Marines basic training. Chris misses him, especially since their parents’ divorce, as now he’s alone with his emotionally immature, racist mother. He joins the mission, but he has a secret: He’s in possession of Avery’s journal. Jones’ book, featuring occasional grayscale illustrations by Shipman, is a delightfully entertaining story that explores friendship and family dynamics. The tale unfolds through the third-person perspectives of Avery, Chris, Damien, Skylar, and Natalie, all of whom are well-developed, compelling characters. The book touches upon themes such as race and separation from one’s parents in ways that young readers will find relatable. The diverse cast includes Avery and Skylar, who are Black; Damien, who’s described as having brown skin; Natalie, who’s Latina; and Chris, who’s white. Natalie appears to be neurodivergent, although it isn’t explicitly stated: “[Avery] focused on Natalie’s lunch. There were a bunch of brightly colored, square plastic containers, and each one had a different food or sauce in it...‘Nat doesn't like for her food to touch,’ Skylar said.”
A fun, thoughtful story about making friends and adjusting to change.Pub Date: April 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798989394616
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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