A sincere cautionary tale about finding one’s voice and putting others’ needs before one’s own.
Mallory Marsh is eager to please.
Whether she’s agreeing to look after her chaotic twin brothers to help her overworked and recently separated mom or simply saying that everyone else’s preferred pizza toppings are her favorites, too, Mal always puts everyone else’s needs before her own. She’s placated by stealthy acts of rebellion, lying about her age so she can publish her webcomic, “Metal-Plated Heart,” whose characters are closely based on her classmates, and attending the library’s comic club when her parents think she’s at swim team practice. When Mal meets nonbinary cutie Noa at comic club, she begins to realize that neither gay nor straight might be the right label for her. Meanwhile, the library is planning a drag storytime, and Mal is anxious about the protesters who are trying to shut it down. Mal is at a relatable stage on her queer journey, and questioning middle schoolers will surely see themselves in her story. Most of her problems stem from conflict avoidance, and Leahy establishes that this trait comes from her father, who tells Mal that he’s working on expressing his emotions in therapy, though there’s no mention that Mal could benefit from therapy as well. Dynamic panels from the webcomic are interspersed throughout, offering additional insights into Mal’s emotions. Mal’s mother is Korean, and her father is implied white; Noa has brown skin.
A sincere cautionary tale about finding one’s voice and putting others’ needs before one’s own. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780063255531
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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