Reminiscent of Judy Blume’s work, this endearing story will make many children laugh and allow some to see a part of...
Best known for her Tales from Alcatraz series, Choldenko writes for a slightly younger set in this celebration of family ingenuity.
It’s hard enough that fifth-grader Liam’s parents divorced and now he, his two younger sisters, and their single mom live in an apartment in need of repair. Their beloved dog, Cupcake, won’t stop peeing on the rug, and the landlord has given them three weeks to get rid of the dog—or they’re all out. Episodic chapters balance depictions of the harsh realities of divorce and financial changes with amusing trial-and-error escapades as the siblings hatch moneymaking schemes to fund expensive vet tests. Along the way, the personality of each sibling shines through. Faced with more responsibility than other kids his age, Liam just wants to play tennis as well as Roger Federer—or at least to keep up with Moses, a new student who seems to have it all. Third-grader and total nerd Dakota is biding her time until she can cure cancer. Second-grader and avid hugger Izzy has Down syndrome, and her inclusion is not only seamless, but integral to the plot. Even when getting on each other’s nerves, they rally together when it matters most. Expressive black-line art depicts their lovable antics as well as members from their diverse community. Liam and his family are white; his best friend, Dodge, has brown skin and is likely of Latinx heritage, and Moses presents black, among other secondary characters of color.
Reminiscent of Judy Blume’s work, this endearing story will make many children laugh and allow some to see a part of themselves. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1888-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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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