A sweet story about a friendship with a most inauspicious start.
Once upon a bowling shoe….
Miles Spagoski’s favorite place is his family’s bowling alley. A worrier who is awkward with girls, Miles wishes life were more like bowling, where there is “always a chance for a do-over.” Maybe if he wears his lucky bowling shoes someone will think he’s interesting enough to go to the upcoming dance with. Meanwhile, Amy Silverman is lonely and unhappy about moving to her uncle’s funeral home; her bedroom smells moldy, and the environment triggers memories of her mom’s funeral. A writer, Amy projects her life and dreams onto her characters in hopes of rewriting her story with a happy ending. The two kids meet when one of Miles’ lucky bowling shoes lands on Amy’s head. Miles has no idea how lucky his shoe is, because things don’t always turn out the way we expect. Miles’ and Amy’s perspectives alternate in the intrusive third-person narration, which includes earnest and gently humorous insights into themes of friendship, loss, and perseverance set in a contrasting typeface. Paratext includes glossaries of bowling and writing terms. Well-rounded supporting characters include Miles’ best friend, Randall, a stylish boy with severe asthma, and their friend Tate, a blue-haired girl who weight lifts competitively. Miles is Jewish, and Amy’s leg-length discrepancy requires her to wear a heel lift. Excepting a minor character with a Spanish surname, assume the white default.
A sweet story about a friendship with a most inauspicious start. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1373-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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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