A useful, even soothing choice for children undergoing a common transition.
Juliet loves glitter, painting, cookie-dough ice cream, Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, and writing lists. She doesn’t love that she and her older sister, Miranda, have had to move away from Bakersfield to a beachfront San Diego cottage because her parents are divorcing.
The 11-year-old is immediately befriended by same-aged Emma, whose family lives near the beach and runs an ice cream shop. Together, the girls cast bottles with messages into the sea. Someone—using the signature “Some Kid at the Beach”—responds to Juliet’s message, challenging Juliet to try to make a wish come true for someone, both setting up a minor mystery and leading to a small, touching subplot. Advice for children experiencing a divorce comes thick and steady, making this a useful purchase for that group, if they are willing to overlook the rather slight storyline. Juliet is a likable-enough character, and her narrative voice mostly rings true as she alternately rages against her new situation and competently navigates it, assisted a great deal by extremely nice Emma and her remarkably pleasant family (whose mostly smooth road contrasts poignantly with Juliet’s new bumpy one) and by her older sister’s kind and calming advice. Nearly all the characters appear to be the white default.
A useful, even soothing choice for children undergoing a common transition. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-19574-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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