A touching homage to the healing of old wounds and family relationships.
Two tweens and an old apple tree uncover a family secret.
Sonnet and her younger sister, Villanelle, move with their single mother from Colorado to live with their maternal grandfather in Indiana. Anderson Granger is struggling to process his wife’s recent death and is showing worrying signs of forgetfulness. Twelve-year-old Sonnet always wondered why they rarely visited Gramps and Nana, but Mom avoided answering her questions. Meanwhile, neighbor boy Zeke Morrison feels disconnected from his environmental journalist father. Zeke’s vegan family eschews technology, which he finds frustrating. After years of home schooling, Zeke just wants to fit in at the local middle school. Both Sonnet and Zeke choose Anderson Granger as the subject of their seventh grade oral history project (much to Sonnet’s annoyance). Initially unwilling partners, they grow closer as they work together, and their interviews reveal the secret behind Sonnet’s mom’s family estrangement. The mystery in this deftly characterized novel unravels from three different points of view—those of Sonnet, Zeke, and an old apple tree that witnessed the whole story. The personified apple tree, the last one standing in the orchard, faithfully interprets the family’s story in moving poems that are interspersed throughout the novel. The tree’s relationship with the family opens Zeke’s eyes to the deep connection between humans and the natural world, helping to heal his relationship with his father. Main characters are coded white.
A touching homage to the healing of old wounds and family relationships. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780823457106
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
A warm bundle of holiday cheer.
In a funny, feel-good tale, 12-year-old twins separated at birth meet by chance and try to pull off a family switch during the December holidays.
The girls, who are cued white, agree that it would be a delicious prank, but each has a personal motive, too: Aviva Davis, who was adopted by a culturally Jewish mom and a Black dad who was raised Christian, wonders what it’s like to celebrate Christmas. Budding author Holly Martin, who was adopted by a white-presenting single mom, sees a golden opportunity to gather experiences for a school writing assignment about facing her fears. In a plot as sweet as a Hanukkah jelly doughnut and twisty as a Christmas cinnamon roll, the pair just manages to bail one another out of a string of sticky situations—both hilarious and otherwise. They both learn something of the customs and meaning of the two holidays while working through tears and laughter—not to mention conflicts sparked by their very different personalities. Everything culminates in a holiday performance at a local senior center that will have readers rising up to cheer them on. Though their history remains tantalizingly mysterious, for the protagonists, who narrate alternating chapters, it’s mission accomplished and more: Aviva emerges feeling more secure in her Jewish identity, while anxious Holly discovers unexpected depths of courage.
A warm bundle of holiday cheer. (song lyrics) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250360670
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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