Busy but sweet and optimistic.
A closeted gay werewolf bar mitzvah boy hopes nobody will learn about his crushing anxiety.
Benji Zeb can’t let on how panicked he is about his impending coming of age. He knows that his mother, the leader of their egalitarian Washington state werewolf kibbutz and wolf sanctuary, expects greatness from him. The only thing to do is pretend he isn’t gutted by terror and shortness of breath at the idea of leading their Modern Orthodox congregation in a Torah reading. Changing into werewolf form calms him down, but he’s not allowed to shift because his mother says he isn’t studying enough. Benji knows that one of the local ranchers, the racist and antisemitic stepdad of his estranged crush, Caleb Gao, is planning something dreadful. Why doesn’t anyone on the kibbutz listen when Benji tries to warn them? But when Caleb turns up at the kibbutz, it turns out that he and Benji have something unexpected in common: Caleb’s turned into a werewolf, too. Benji finds that introducing Caleb to lycanthropy and Judaism is surprisingly rewarding. The boys’ relationship is by turns hopeful and charmingly uncomfortable. In this overwhelmingly white rural area, Caleb has much to learn about Jews (information that’s sometimes heavy-handedly delivered). Biracial Caleb, who’s white and Chinese American, is startled to discover that though Benji’s white, many of the other kibbutz families aren’t. Benji’s warm family counterbalances the hate Caleb’s heard from his internet-radicalized stepdad.
Busy but sweet and optimistic. (author’s note, resources) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781774880524
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A beautifully rendered setting enfolds a disappointing plot.
In sixth grade, Izzy Mancini’s cozy, loving world falls apart.
She and her family have moved out of the cottage she grew up in. Her mother has spent the summer on Block Island instead of at home with Izzy. Her father has recently returned from military service in Afghanistan partially paralyzed and traumatized. The only people she can count on are Zelda and Piper, her best friends since kindergarten—that is, until the Haidary family moves into the upstairs apartment. At first, Izzy resents the new guests from Afghanistan even though she knows she should be grateful that Dr. Haidary saved her father’s life. But despite her initial resistance (which manifests at times as racism), as Izzy gets to know Sitara, the Haidarys’ daughter, she starts to question whether Zelda and Piper really are her friends for forever—and whether she has the courage to stand up for Sitara against the people she loves. Ferruolo weaves a rich setting, fully immersing readers in the largely white, coastal town of Seabury, Rhode Island. Disappointingly, the story resolves when Izzy convinces her classmates to accept Sitara by revealing the Haidarys’ past as American allies, a position that put them in so much danger that they had to leave home. The idea that Sitara should be embraced only because her family supported America, rather than simply because she is a human being, significantly undermines the purported message of tolerance for all.
A beautifully rendered setting enfolds a disappointing plot. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-30909-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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