Empathetic and emotionally intelligent.
Big feelings are uncomfortable but to be expected in this story of finding joy and community amid change and loss.
With her best friend, Mia Ortega-Anderson, moving across the country to New York, Chinese American Ruby Chu was already afraid of seventh grade, but nothing prepared her for another close friend drifting away and the unexpected death of her beloved paternal grandfather. After Ruby’s caught ditching school, her parents decide she’ll spend summer weekdays with Nai-Nai, her paternal grandmother. At first reluctant to stay somewhere her grandfather is noticeably absent, Ruby’s walls lower as she and Nai-Nai speak openly about their grief. As Ruby begins to open up and find a comfortable routine, more big changes threaten her fragile sense of safety. When a family friend’s bakery is poised for closure, Ruby and classmate Liam Yeung set out to save it. The San Francisco Chinatown community is realistically presented: Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken, not every older adult is an immigrant, and a variety of professions and experiences are portrayed. It’s unclear if impulsive, restless Ruby, who struggles in school, is neurodiverse or just stands out compared to the rest of her driven, focused family. Readers will identify with Ruby’s roller coaster of emotions amid the challenges of growing up: loved ones leaving, friendships waning, and fitting into the world authentically. Ruby is incredibly self-aware, and her emotions are given space and validity without excusing harm done.
Empathetic and emotionally intelligent. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780063008939
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
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