Insufficiently exaggerated for farce, insufficiently plausible for anything else.
A class livestreaming assignment creates both humiliations and new friendships for 12-year-old Simon.
For Grade 7 technology class, Simon’s required to do a livestream on a shared platform. Students who create “engaging content”—that is, those students who get lots of likes and comments by their classmates—will get the better grades. Simon, who is White, wants an A, as his constantly fighting parents have promised as a reward for good grades to take him to the Canadian Video Game Championships; he secretly hopes they’ll reconcile on the trip. His best friend, Jocelyn, who is Filipina, wants to get an A in order to be allowed to continue her mixed martial arts training. It feels to Simon as though his plans to create engaging content are cursed. In a series of accidental livestreams (of increasingly dubious probability), Simon streams his dog playing with his mother’s underwear, a mortifying toilet incident, pet mouth-to-mouth, and worse. Weirdly, every video makes Simon more popular thanks to the unintentional comedy. Everything goes awry when Simon’s teacher, at the behest of the private company that owns the video app, changes the grading guidelines for the class (inexplicably presented as a normal educational choice). Suddenly, Jocelyn and Simon are no longer allies. And Simon needs allies, for though the school’s a “no-bullying zone,” the teachers are oblivious to the violent bullies who target Simon—even when they livestream the violence for their own course assignments. Video games and slapstick poop jokes can’t salvage this haphazard plot.
Insufficiently exaggerated for farce, insufficiently plausible for anything else. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-988761-54-1
Page Count: 135
Publisher: Common Deer Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Simplistic, but a straight shot on goal.
Despite poor first impressions, an aggressive new student earns a spot as goalkeeper on the local soccer team.
Loud, pushy new arrival Shane definitely seems to come with an attitude problem in this simple tale, told from the perspective of one of Shane’s teammates and originally published in 2021 in the U.K. A few days later, however, the source of the chip on his shoulder becomes clear when the North Park Juniors take the pitch. When Shane shows up to play, his bossy, verbally abusive stepfather, Mick, is in tow, screaming orders and insults from the sidelines. The story, which is printed with what the publisher calls “dyslexia-friendly fonts and paper tones,” is laid out with extra spacing between the short sentences and paragraphs. The author also takes multiple breaks to examine historical feats and foibles of renowned goalies of the past. The plot goes on to follow a fairly direct course. After the police haul Mick away in the wake of a chair-throwing tantrum, a more emotionally stable Shane shows up the following weekend to perform heroic exploits in a hard-fought climactic match. Physical descriptions in the text are minimal; young players and adults in Chalik’s frequent illustrations are woodenly drawn but feature a mix of light- and dark-skinned faces.
Simplistic, but a straight shot on goal. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781454954842
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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