A refreshing depiction of drama turned positive, this series opener is perfect for young entrepreneurs.
Can Resa Lopez learn to balance leadership and teamwork in time to run a successful business that wins the school contest?
When Resa finds out that the sixth-grade trip is to Adventure Central and that the team whose lemonade stand raises the most money for the trip gets QuickTix—wait-free access to all the thrilling rides—she is beyond excited. She and her best friend, Didi Singh, are happy to be on the same team, but Resa quickly judges their other team members wanting: unreliable fashionista Harriet Nguyen and quiet Amelia Grant, the new girl. Resa assumes that Amelia is “stuck-up” because she doesn’t speak much, but Amelia finds her voice when Resa insists on bossing everyone around. Didi normally tries to smooth things over on Resa’s behalf, but even she gets fed up with Resa’s attitude. The team’s setbacks and failures are almost unbearable, but the chuckleworthy snark will keep readers going. The team members learn not only about listening to each other, using their strengths, and stepping out of their comfort zones, but also about important business skills such as marketing and location, which are expounded upon in an endnote. Resa makes for a daringly flawed early-middle-grade protagonist, with room for growth that’s realized satisfyingly. Resa (Teresa) is Afro-Latina, Didi (Indira) is Indian, Amelia is white, and Harriet is Asian.
A refreshing depiction of drama turned positive, this series opener is perfect for young entrepreneurs. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18040-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Imprint
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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