An uneven portrait of a girl in distress.
A novel in verse that explores a period of wrenching transition for a vulnerable 12-year-old.
Lilac Jones has lived with her aunt Truly, uncle Mack, and one-year-older cousin Charla ever since her mother died in a car accident when Lilac was 6. When Truly announces that she’s pregnant with twins, Lilac worries even more than she already does about being a burdensome outsider. Lilac and best friend Callie were inseparable, but the beginning of seventh grade unravels their closeness, just as Truly’s pregnancy complications require months of bed rest. Seeking direction within the upheaval, Lilac explores several new paths, developing curiosity about her estranged father’s Jewish identity (which is shared by new classmate Eli) and joining a hiking club at school called the Trailblazers. The club provides the book’s framework (“Part One: Start of the Trail,” “Part Two: Left Turn,” “Part Three: Spur Leading to a Different Trail”) and illuminates the title (switchback is defined as “a path with alternate / ascents and descents”). But the highs—Lilac’s newfound interest in hiking and burgeoning friendships with Eli and fellow club members—are overwhelmed by the seriousness of her covert attempts to reconnect with her unreliable father, who struggles with addiction. Lilac is a sympathetic protagonist, yearning to feel more secure in her relationships, but the author struggles to balance the myriad challenges and resolves her profound alienation too smoothly. Most characters read white.
An uneven portrait of a girl in distress. (Verse fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9780823458325
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
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