Quirky characters navigate life’s ups and downs.
Eleven-year-old Lenny, who’s grieving his mother’s death, makes friends and grapples with his emotions at an experimental school based at a college campus.
Lenny Syms’ cynical side quickly shows up even as Dad tries to sell him on the positives of the Copernican School, located at the Tennessee university where he’s a Latin professor. His father has been unmoored and inattentive ever since Lenny’s mom died from skin cancer six months earlier, and the job change and move into campus housing haven’t helped. At school, Lenny and the four other sixth graders—Henrietta Calhoun, Makai Kahele, Allison Somerville, and David Li—experience a rota of offbeat teachers, who oversee “group actualization” and practicums for their “autonomous classroom.” Types are established early, shaping the friendship dynamics. White-presenting Hen is into chi and acupuncture; David, who’s cued Chinese American, is a budding, calculus-savvy engineer; Ally, who’s cued Black through several mentions of her hair, is into cosmetology; and Mak, who seems to be “Hawaiian,” is into football. Feeling forgotten at home and unnoticed at school, Lenny cuts classes and in the process finds a connection with an older professor, who becomes a sort of mentor. First-person narrator Lenny reads white; he and his father, more nuanced than other cast members, grow over the course of the school year. Creative descriptions of odors contribute to a sense of place, and pop-culture references add realism without being so frequent as to quickly date the story.
Quirky characters navigate life’s ups and downs. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781534486058
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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 TO SCREEN
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story.
Leaving Brooklyn behind, Black math-whiz and puzzle lover Bree starts a new life in Florida, where she’ll be tossed into the deep end in more ways than one. Keeping her head above water may be the trickiest puzzle yet.
While her dad is busy working and training in IT, Bree struggles at first to settle into Enith Brigitha Middle School, largely due to the school’s preoccupation with swimming—from the accomplishments of its namesake, a Black Olympian from Curaçao, to its near victory at the state swimming championships. But Bree can’t swim. To illustrate her anxiety around this fact, the graphic novel’s bright colors give way to gray thought bubbles with thick, darkened outlines expressing Bree’s deepest fears and doubts. This poignant visual crowds some panels just as anxious feelings can crowd the thoughts of otherwise star students like Bree. Ultimately, learning to swim turns out to be easy enough with the help of a kind older neighbor—a Black woman with a competitive swimming past of her own as well as a rich and bittersweet understanding of Black Americans’ relationship with swimming—who explains to Bree how racist obstacles of the past can become collective anxiety in the present. To her surprise, Bree, with her newfound water skills, eventually finds herself on the school’s swim team, navigating competition, her anxiety, and new, meaningful relationships.
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-305677-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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