An unusually nuanced exploration of bullying; as perceptive as it is entertaining.
The summer following the events of The Lemonade War (2007) is one of literal as well as figurative bridge building for sibs Evan and Jessie.
Prickly 9-year-old Jessie is initially disgusted, as instead of being enrolled in a summer camp for young engineers, she’s relegated to “How to Make and Decorate Fairy Houses”—worse yet, she joins a trio of mean third grade girls led by nemesis Becky. For easygoing fifth grader Evan, it’s summer school, where he’s not only singled out for remedial tutoring, but has accidentally been placed with older middle schoolers with an established pecking order and Reed, a vicious bully, at the top. Unsurprisingly, in short order Jessie has hijacked her class, efficiently leaving Becky on the outside but leading everyone else in a seminar on bridge design and construction (learning along the way to tolerate the occasional toy troll or other nonscientific embellishment). Evan has a harder time as he battles powerful twin urges to stand with classmate Stevie, Reed’s favorite victim, or stand by to fit into the established social order. Making the better, if perhaps not safer, choice leads to a climactic brush with disaster…but with some timely help from a surprising source, Reed is ultimately sent packing in a satisfactory way. As before, it’s the interplay between Jessie’s fierce intellect and Evan’s emotional intelligence that resolves issues and boosts this series from good to great. Characters read White.
An unusually nuanced exploration of bullying; as perceptive as it is entertaining. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-69299-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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