A heartfelt cross-generational look at vulnerability and the need for community.
In this second series entry, a problem-solving 12-year-old attempts, with the help of her friends, to solve her mother’s financial problems.
Nola Washington is a fashion-forward Black tween who dreams of becoming a hairdresser like her mother and inheriting the beauty shop her grandmother founded. After Ella once again surprises her circle of friends by signing them up for something without asking—this time committing them to dancing in the school talent show—Nola, who’s used to being the fixer in their group, agrees to be their leader. But Nola’s vision of talent show success hits a snag when she asks for money for a new outfit and Mom only hands over $20. She’s always had a rock-solid relationship with her mother—whom she sees as “living proof that women can have it all. A thriving business, a daughter on the honor roll, and the best wardrobe in town”—but her mom’s attempt to hide their financial problems affects their relationship and spills over into Nola’s grades and social commitments. After she turns to her friends for support, they brainstorm a grand plan to turn the salon around. While Nola’s storyline is the focus of the narrative, each character within the friend circle has a distinct voice. Miller effectively uses the graphic novel format to offer a nuanced portrayal of Nola’s awareness of adult financial stressors while also keeping the solutions she proposes kid-centric.
A heartfelt cross-generational look at vulnerability and the need for community. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780316591492
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Little, Brown Ink
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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