With this flying start, a young maker makes a strong bid for attention.
A high achiever patches up friendships and learns the value of asking for help when she overschedules herself.
For new seventh grader Mackenzie Miller, anything worth doing is worth overdoing—beginning with persistent efforts to get her divorced mom to use a dating app, continuing with Operation Make a New Friend at school after being ghosted by her old bestie, Johanna, and culminating in a frenzy of preparations and planning to raise funds for new band instruments. Whipping up friendship bracelets (step-by-step instructions are appended) and leaving readers breathless in the wake of her narrative rush, this budding force of nature pinballs through a lively intergenerational supporting cast featuring an extended clan of Pakistani Americans led by promisingly unattached next-door neighbor Zane. Sheera Mirza, Zane’s niece and a classmate who joins Mackenzie in an unorthodox after-school arts club, proves a loyal ally when Mackenzie finally admits that in trying to set up the looming fundraiser single-handedly, she’s bitten off more than she can chew. The transformative insight that it’s OK to ask for help leads not only to a spectacularly successful fundraiser, but, by the end, patched-up relations with Johanna and another alienated friend, capped by exciting hints that her mom and Zane might be turning into an item. Mackenzie reads White and has some Greek ancestry.
With this flying start, a young maker makes a strong bid for attention. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-60306-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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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Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways.
Devotion permeates this tale of a small dog who’s swept up in a peasants’ revolt against a greedy king.
Inflamed with righteousness in the wake of yet another tax hike, 12-year-old Tom has defied his parents to slip away and join the revolutionary Reds. Stoutly declaring that he’s a good dog, 5-year-old Rebel chases after him to bring his beloved boy back—and discovers a wide new world beyond the farm, fraught with dangers but also rich in animal friends offering help and advice. Just as beguiling as the furry narrator’s dog’s-eye view of events are his ongoing arguments with Jaxon, a gruff feral hound he meets along the way, who urges him to find his wild inner True Dog. Jaxon’s refusal to be bound by emotional attachments ultimately clashes with Rebel’s big, uncomplicated heart. Following a brush with death, Rebel encounters a mystical Companion, who offers him glimpses of dog heaven; when the climactic battle arrives, Rebel declares, “I get to decide what I do with my one and only life. And if I use it for anything, I’m going to use it for love.” The author brings the odyssey to a satisfactory conclusion with one last, pure affirmation of love. In this story set in an alternate Britain reminiscent of its 17th-century Civil War, Rebel distinguishes humans in the cast by their voices, smell, and dress.
Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781536246797
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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