This first in a new series for preteens and young teens who value friendship and doing the right thing is pretty endearing.
In a story told entirely through text messages, emails, homework assignments, handwritten notes, and diary entries, three longtime besties discover it’s OK to welcome new friends into your life without leaving the old ones behind.
Cecily, Gabrielle, and Prianka have started the second half of their sixth-grade year, and some changes are afoot: Gabby might have to move, there’s a Valentine’s Day dance on the horizon (and dates with boys!), and there’s a new girl at school, Victoria. When Gabby is paired with lonely Victoria for an assignment, Pri and Cecily go on high alert because Victoria seems so desperate to fit in. What if she steals Gabby from them? When someone starts sending Victoria mean texts, the principal intervenes, asking kids and parents to help “eradicate” the sixth-grade “social cruelty” or the Valentine’s dance will be canceled—but the girls’ attempts to include Victoria in their group texts backfire when Pri accidentally sends a rude comment about her to the entire group. Greenwald (Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender, 2017) successfully blends emojis and text to bring the high drama and emotional changes of middle school to life. Everyone appears to be white, except Prianka and the boy she likes, who are both Indian and attend Bal Vihar classes (for Hindu language and culture). A glossary of textspeak is provided.
This first in a new series for preteens and young teens who value friendship and doing the right thing is pretty endearing. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268990-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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