Four moms meet at yoga class and decide to create a book club for their very individual sixth-grade daughters. Emma’s mom, a librarian, orchestrates the year-long monthly discussions of Little Women. Jess, Emma’s best friend, misses her actress mom, who is away in New York City. Cassidy, daughter of a retired supermodel, misses her dad, who was killed in a car accident. Megan feels pressure to stay with the rivaling “Fab Four” clique rather than the book-club girls but really wants to pursue her interest in fashion design despite her mom’s Ivy League expectations. Parallels between the classic novel’s characters and the girls are interspersed as the mothers and daughters pursue their monthly meetings despite a continual display of bullying, if not nasty, behaviors and attitudes from adults, kids and Queen Bee moms. Told in alternating voices from the girls’ viewpoints, some issues are addressed and resolved in an all-too-conveniently glamorous trip to New York City. Certain imagery Frederick provides seems cliché and even vexing. The popular crowd constantly chastises Emma for wearing thrift store hand-me-downs, while her mother dresses in her own thrifty choices. Are librarians really that poor? Still, possibility for discussion exists here, though the novel itself is a negative model for a parent/child book group. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-689-86412-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
Budding billionaire Greg Kenton has a knack for making money and a serious rival. When he issues his first Chunky Comic Book at the beginning of sixth grade, his neighbor and classmate Maura Shaw produces an alternative. Their quarrel draws the attention of the principal, who bans comics from the school. But when they notice all the other commercial messages in their school, they take their cause to the local school committee. Without belaboring his point, Clements takes on product placement in schools and the need for wealth. “Most people can only use one bathroom at a time,” says Greg’s math teacher, Mr. Z. Greg gets the message; middle-grade readers may ignore it in favor of the delightful spectacle of Greg’s ultimate economic success, a pleasing result for the effort this up-and-coming young businessman puts into his work. Clements weaves intriguing information about comic book illustration into this entertaining, smoothly written story. Selznick’s accompanying black-and-white drawings have the appearance of sketches Greg might have made himself. This hits the jackpot. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86683-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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
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