An engaging portrait of two children’s world before they became famous.
The friendship of Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, inspiration for Scout and Dill in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, is fictionalized in “a flavorful bowl of southern homestyle yarns.”
A girl dressed like a boy and a boy dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy meet and become fast friends in Monroeville, Alabama, “sometime in the Great Depression.” They contrive adventures to spice up life in Monroeville, and their stories add up to a fine re-creation of small-town Southern life. Young readers will enjoy Nelle and Tru’s treehouse, adventure at the courthouse, their brush with the Ku Klux Klan, Nelle’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, staring down the Grand Dragon, and reclusive spooky neighbor Sonny Boular firing their imaginations. Older readers, including all of the teachers of the classic novel, will see in these childhood adventures the makings of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the author’s note adds helpful information and mentions Go Set a Watchman without getting into the intricate relationship of that novel to its famous offspring. Since Nelle and Tru loved writing stories, Neri even includes “reimagined” short stories from Nelle’s and Tru’s lives. The charming and elegantly written novel doesn’t shy away from issues of mental illness, child abandonment, and racism, but they are woven neatly into the fabric of the characters’ lives in the tiny Southern town.
An engaging portrait of two children’s world before they became famous. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-69960-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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