A standout SF adventure.
A middle school misfit finds his people.
Jake Wind isn’t exactly an ordinary 12-year-old. For one thing, his dad’s a proctologist. For another, Jake isn’t actually human. Jake is a shape-shifting pile of goo, one discovered by his parents late one night and brought up as a human in Cedar Creek View, Arizona. As Jake enters middle school with his ever changing body, odd things start happening around town. Sinkholes open up everywhere, people behave strangely, and Jake is the only person in town who can hear a slight, constant hum. With the help of new pal Agnes Oakes, Jake sets off to discover the source of all these oddities, hoping to find some answers. Jake and Agnes make for compelling protagonists, fully shaded with character, drive, and an engaging relationship. The author structures the plot adeptly, spinning organically from each point of conflict to create a brisk and propulsive read. Nothing is too drawn out, nor are readers ever ahead of Jake and Agnes when it comes to discovering the strange source of Cedar Creek View’s abnormalities. The result is an exciting and intriguing twist on science-fiction tropes often overcooked by lesser hands. Jake’s parents are both of Dutch and Indonesian heritage, and when in human form, Jake presumably resembles them; Agnes is White.
A standout SF adventure. (Science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-297060-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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