A solid mystery that discusses data privacy and journalistic integrity.
After Ashley filmed Coach Kelly dancing in her sports bra and it went viral, she was relieved of her role as reporter for the school news program.
Together with her best friend, cameraperson Maya, and their video editor friend, Brielle, she forms the Renegade Reporters. The sixth graders decide to start a YouTube show about news events in Baltimore. Ashley discovers that Van Ness, the media company sponsoring the school news and creator of the software students use, has selected her classmate Harry, the lead anchor, as a young creative to feature on their website. Ash wants to interview company founder Maria Van Ness because she feels it’s unethical for them to promote Harry without disclosing their sponsorship. When she and Maya show up at the company headquarters, they accidentally discover that Van Ness is collecting personal data from their young users. The novel then becomes a lesson on journalistic investigation and cybersecurity, with the team researching, interviewing experts, and zeroing in on their target. Whether middle-grade readers will be concerned about this important issue is questionable, but the unfolding of the investigation is skillfully handled, and kids will cheer for the perspicacious young reporters. Jewish Ash has two dads; Maya is cued as South Asian Indian, and the cover shows Brielle as Black but nothing in the text corroborates this.
A solid mystery that discusses data privacy and journalistic integrity. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32303-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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