Ever since first grade, when he shoved a classmate’s teddy bear into the toilet, everyone at Stockton Elementary “expected trouble” from Benjamin Carter, “so that’s what they got.” Diagnosed with ADD, learning disabilities, eye-hand coordination problems and saddled with a lisp, Ben’s report cards are packed with “U’s for Unsatisfactory and D’s for Disrespectful, Disturbing, Difficult, Disorganized, Dumb, Dreadful, [and] Disgusting.” Ben, who despite his behavior problems is essentially a nice boy, has always felt alone at school, a condition that his solid and smartly characterized family can’t ameliorate. Then Trout, a tall, thin boy with a red question mark he claims was tattooed on his chin, moves to Ben’s town, and suddenly Ben has both a buddy and a partner in crime. After a prank in which he and Trout cause pandemonium by tossing a hundred Super Balls down the school stairs, local parents improbably band together, eventually demanding that Trout be transferred to a school for troubled children. In a poignant but rather far-fetched plot maneuver, Ben is able to save the day by showing up at a parents’ meeting at school to plead Trout’s case and to explain what living with learning disabilities is like. The interaction between Trout and Ben is boyishly authentic but unlike George Harrar’s Parents Wanted (2001) or the Joey Pigza series that give the reader a crazy, tilt-a-whirl feel of what it might be like to have ADD, Ben just seems like a regular kid who’s somewhat unaccountably always in trouble. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-81219-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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