An original exploration of living with mental illness.
A middle schooler with obsessive-compulsive disorder navigates family, friendship, and role-playing games.
Isaac, who has light brown skin and dark curly hair, was recently diagnosed with OCD. He constantly hears the metaphorical buzzing of his intrusive thoughts, depicted as cute but cruel cartoon bees. The artwork makes good use of color to bring readers into Isaac’s world. His bees are always brightly colored, as are the panels depicting positive experiences such as his art, the friends he is beginning to make, and the fantasy world of their Dungeons & Dragons–like role-playing game. In contrast, school and home are shown in drab, largely gray and beige tones. Isaac’s mom does her best to support and protect him, but her efforts slide into being overprotective and controlling. Over the course of the narrative, however, she learns to trust Isaac and support him as he figures out his own path. With their mom’s attention on Isaac, his sister, Miriam, feels ignored, and she takes this out on him. This is a sensitive depiction of an unfortunate reality: When one sibling has a difficult diagnosis, others often feel pushed aside. In this case, both siblings are ultimately able to support each other while expressing their needs to their mother. This book provides a positive, sympathetic introduction to living with OCD, with appeal for readers who have the same diagnosis as well as those who do not.
An original exploration of living with mental illness. (supplemental art) (Graphic fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780316628419
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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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