A quirky magical romp with real depth.
After rescuing a two-tailed cat, Ollie and his sister find their wishes coming true.
Ollie Di Costa has already come out as transgender, but when Jake Barney, his old friend turned bully, publicly mocks his reading about demiboys, it kick-starts an awful afternoon, especially because popular Noah Choi witnesses the whole incident. Ollie and older sister Mia go to the beach (one place they escape their constantly fighting parents), and there, strange black vines drag Ollie beneath the sand into a world where everything’s backward and smoke pours out of gray-skinned people’s eyes. Ollie escapes after saving Wishbone, a two-tailed cat, and he and Mia soon realize that all their problems—lack of money, unrequited love, mean classmates—go away just by expressing their desires in front of Wishbone. But these wishes come with negative consequences for others. Mia wants to stop, but Ollie can’t let go of his anger with the world. After isolating himself from the pain others cause him, Ollie must now discover his true friends before he finds himself cursed. Though some clunky elements disrupt the narrative, Ollie’s journey from hurt and angry loner to someone who lets himself love and be loved by his friends is earned and earnest. Snappy humor, a genuine cast of characters, and sweet moments spent baking and hanging out with Wishbone and Noah, Ollie’s crush, balance the queerphobia and familial strife. Ollie and Mia are white, and Noah is Korean American.
A quirky magical romp with real depth. (Horror. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781547612574
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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