An engaging, textured, and deeply humane coming-of-age novel.
In 1941, against the backdrop of turbulent world events, life unfolds in a tightknit, largely Quaker farming community where friends and family are one and the same.
Precocious, math-brained Peggy Mott, a Methodist 12-year-old who presents white, is the youngest student entering high school in rural West Branch, Iowa. Peggy is grappling with best friend Delia’s leukemia diagnosis, a first crush (on 16-year-old German Jewish refugee Gunther), a first dance, and changing relationships with friends and family. Refugees from Europe, mostly Jewish, have been staying at the nearby Scattergood Hostel, which is run by Quakers. Bouwman paints a rich, detailed landscape, from mundane farm chores to deeply layered explorations of characters and relationships. Peggy’s astute and observant first-person narrative captures her personal journey as she struggles with self-awareness, stages of grief, and her changing perspective as she’s exposed to the greater complexities of the world. Equal parts tender and heartwarming and tragically heartbreaking, this story, which will appeal to fans of Lauren Wolk, also offers a realistic depiction of marriage, showing compromises, challenges, and the different ways people care for and love each other. Readers will become deeply invested in the fully developed characters—each flawed and human but doing their best, Peggy included. The power of stories to connect people with others, bear witness, and create joy is an interwoven theme running throughout the text.
An engaging, textured, and deeply humane coming-of-age novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780823457755
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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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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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