An intriguing coming-of-age story about adapting to unsought, inescapable change.
A (literally) magical New England summer is the catalyst for reshaping a conflicted Los Angeles teen’s worldview.
Last year, Anna Bell got her first period, was dumped by her best friend, and experienced her parents’ divorce. On her 14th birthday, her mother, Miriam, announces she’s selling the unusual bookstore she can no longer afford to run. Like Miriam’s mystical ability to recommend the one book that will change customers’ lives, the bookstore changes its size and offerings. Despite not being a bookworm, Anna loves the store; it’s her second home. Meanwhile, her dad’s focused on his new tattoo business. Suddenly, Miriam and a dazed Anna head to the family cottage in Rockport, Massachusetts, that Miriam’s inherited. Anna explores the seaside and marvels at the comet and meteors reappearing in the night sky after 28 years. Noticing Anna’s moonstone ring, a stranger tells her moonstones signify a fresh start. That night, she’s befriended by two teens and makes discoveries she hopes can reboot her parents’ marriage. Inconsistency in the fantasy is a weakness, with Miriam’s abilities and the bookstore’s shape-shifting not being integrated into the whole. Readers will spot familiar time-travel tropes long before Anna does. Nonetheless, Anna herself—struggling to accept losses, her life upended by things beyond her control—remains compelling. If knowing her parents love her and care for each other doesn’t heal her grief, finding agency is an empowering first step. Characters are presumed White.
An intriguing coming-of-age story about adapting to unsought, inescapable change. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-19451-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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