An unsuccessful attempt to inspire girls to rebel against conformity.
Determined to prove that girls can play the drums, Tig forms an all-girl rock band.
When a male classmate declares that a girl drummer doesn’t have the ability to lead a band, 13-year-old Antigone, or Tig, begins taking drum lessons. In her quest to disprove her classmate, Tig, a white girl with frizzy, brown hair, searches for the perfect band mates. After disastrous open auditions, she and her cousin privately recruit additional band members, including popular white girl Haley as their lead singer. Predictably, Haley does not take direction well and is asked to leave the band. In retribution for this slight, Haley and her girlfriends try to lure Tig’s new lead singer away from her band. The popular girls sabotage the band’s failed debut performance and upload the fiasco online. Mortified, Tig must re-evaluate her motives for learning the drums and try to keep her band from falling apart. Rue effortlessly captures Tig’s passion for her drums, but her other characters seem to exist only to propel Tig’s internal transformation. Some character portrayals are culturally insensitive, including a redheaded fair-skinned girl who raps and speaks in African-American street slang. Chinese-American Robbie, the only significant character of color (troubling itself in this Tuscaloosa-set novel), is called a racial slur to illustrate bullying, but there is no further acknowledgement or discussion of the slur outside the occurrence.
An unsuccessful attempt to inspire girls to rebel against conformity. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58536-945-4
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways.
Devotion permeates this tale of a small dog who’s swept up in a peasants’ revolt against a greedy king.
Inflamed with righteousness in the wake of yet another tax hike, 12-year-old Tom has defied his parents to slip away and join the revolutionary Reds. Stoutly declaring that he’s a good dog, 5-year-old Rebel chases after him to bring his beloved boy back—and discovers a wide new world beyond the farm, fraught with dangers but also rich in animal friends offering help and advice. Just as beguiling as the furry narrator’s dog’s-eye view of events are his ongoing arguments with Jaxon, a gruff feral hound he meets along the way, who urges him to find his wild inner True Dog. Jaxon’s refusal to be bound by emotional attachments ultimately clashes with Rebel’s big, uncomplicated heart. Following a brush with death, Rebel encounters a mystical Companion, who offers him glimpses of dog heaven; when the climactic battle arrives, Rebel declares, “I get to decide what I do with my one and only life. And if I use it for anything, I’m going to use it for love.” The author brings the odyssey to a satisfactory conclusion with one last, pure affirmation of love. In this story set in an alternate Britain reminiscent of its 17th-century Civil War, Rebel distinguishes humans in the cast by their voices, smell, and dress.
Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781536246797
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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