A lightweight but enjoyable read.
After her grandmother’s move to Florida, future investigative reporter Clara Costa finds life with just her ditzy mother, Gaby, maddeningly unpredictable.
Now Clara and Gaby live in Toronto’s lively, diverse Kensington Market neighborhood in an apartment above Healing Herbs. There, Gaby diagnoses ills and dispenses unscientific remedies. Clara misses her grandmother’s practical, predictable ways. On the bright side, Clara’s bonded with classmate Maeve, a budding actress who’s appreciative of Clara’s colorful, chaotic home. Clara hopes to prove herself as a reporter for the school paper, but the knitting-club profile that Wesley, the ambitious grade-eight editor, assigns Clara offers little scope for her talents. Next, Wesley wants Clara to write a horoscope column: Clara Voyant. Meanwhile, the school mascot, Buzzter the Honeybee (an aging piñata), is stolen. This mystery’s a perfect match for Clara’s investigative talents, but skeptic Clara is stuck with astrological predictions. When these come true, she’s perplexed and intrigued. She also hunts for Buzzter, knowing it’ll be a terrific scoop if she can find him. Clara and the book’s default are white, with the abundant diversity primarily indicated through naming convention; Maeve is biracial and Chinese-Canadian. The plot hums along briskly, but the humor wobbles. At its best—Wesley’s a case in point—it’s dry, succinct, and funny, but Gaby’s more caricature than character. While the plot has amusing twists and turns, the author waffles on the existence of clairvoyance itself.
A lightweight but enjoyable read. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-14-319853-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Puffin/Penguin Random House Canada
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
