A sweet, amusing tale about navigating friendship and family drama.
Maggie Diaz is back for the second half of seventh grade, cellphone in hand, ready for more adventures.
Set a few months after the first volume, this lighthearted second installment follows Maggie, now nearly 13, as she and best friends Julian and Zoey prepare for their Miami middle school’s big spring break trip to Saint Augustine. The spring semester arrival of new classmate Vanessa, who was formerly home-schooled, changes the trio’s dynamic, and things get even more awkward when Maggie’s recently widowed Abuela decides to be a chaperone for the trip. As friends and classmates begin to experience first crushes, Maggie explores her complicated feelings for her pal Eddie, who now sports earrings and eyeliner. The author packs an emotional punch into this fun middle school dramedy: sibling issues (Maggie continues to feel like she can’t compare to her perfect 16-year-old sister, Caro), loss (Abuela and the whole family are mourning Abuelo’s death), friendship jealousy, and first love. In addition to the Cuban American Diazes, the multicultural cast includes Haitian, Creole-speaking Zoey and Japanese and Puerto Rican Vanessa. There’s positive queer representation as well, since Caro now has a cool girlfriend. The cheerful, evocative spot-art illustrations vividly support the text. This is ideal reading for fans of Meg Medina’s Merci Suárez trilogy and anyone looking for stories about plucky girls with close-knit, multigenerational families.
A sweet, amusing tale about navigating friendship and family drama. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781338818611
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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