A tale of family relationships and transitions told with plenty of heart.
Family, folklore, and honors long overdue.
Kaia watches as her family plays on the beach in Southern California. She knows this is the last summer before her older sister, Lainey, leaves for her graduation trip to the Philippines and then heads off to college in New York. When her great-grandfather Tatang announces he is moving back to the Philippines, Kaia is shocked. The thought of losing two close confidants at once springs her into action. She will develop her special-effects makeup skills and win a citywide film contest with her friends as a grand sendoff for Tatang. Kaia’s focus is on her film, inspired by Filipinx folklore, until she learns that Tatang served in the U.S. military during World War II only to be robbed of promised citizenship and honors. Her strategy then becomes twofold: She continues on the film while filling out an application for Tatang to finally receive a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. Kaia’s family is originally from the Ilocos region of the Philippines, and tidbits of Filipinx folklore and culture are woven into the story—at times the explanations of these cultural themes impede the narrative flow. However, as she did in The House That Lou Built (2018), Respicio brings another refreshing contemporary glimpse into the Filipinx American experience while exposing the overlooked history and contributions of Filipinos in the U.S.
A tale of family relationships and transitions told with plenty of heart. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-70757-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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