Overflowing with heart and magic.
A mysterious house reveals startling secrets.
Eleven-year-old Abigail is less than pleased: Her beloved Granny Grace has returned to Jamaica and her widowed father, Theo, has combined households with his new wife, Polly, and her boys, Max, 13, and Louis, 6. After moving into an ivy-covered North London house that they can—with belt-tightening—just afford, the normal upheaval of blended-family life takes an otherworldly turn. Abi emerges from reading The Kon-Tiki Expedition to find the book damp and salty. There’s a flash of green wing—a parrot’s?—and a mysterious tropical seashell. It’s wondrous if unnerving, but Iffen is another order of magic entirely. Plaintive Louis, who loves Abi persistently and unreservedly, welcomes through his ivy-framed bedroom window a feline friend he dubs Iffen. But Iffen grows to potentially deadly proportions—while Polly temporarily works overseas, Theo picks up additional nursing shifts, ill-tempered Max simultaneously navigates an unrequited crush on the French babysitter and a cold war with his former best friend, and Abi retreats into her books. The quest to rescue Louis from Iffen ultimately saves them all. Readers will find the banter, humor, warmth, and cheerful chaos of the family’s lives irresistible. Avid bookworms and die-hard book resisters alike will find sympathetic mirrors, and the latter may well be won over to reading. Abi, her dad, and grandmother are cued as black; all other characters are white.
Overflowing with heart and magic. (Fabulism. 9-13)Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6276-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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