Warm, fortifying, and cozy—like a drink of apple cider.
A 12-year-old girl adjusts to her first year of middle school in this sequel to Stepping Stones (2020).
Fall has come to Peapod Farm, where Jen lives with her mom and her mom's boyfriend, Walter, whose daughters, Andy and Reese, spend weekends on the farm. Andy and Jen have gotten jobs helping their neighbors (two White men whose relationship is undefined) at Fisher Dairy Farm run their annual pumpkin patch, complete with haunted hayride. Jen and Mr. Fisher's nephew Eddie share interests, but it's Andy who has a crush on Eddie; Jen is busy dreading the transition to a new school and is not yet interested in romance. Knisley does a stellar job capturing the confusion of middle school and exploring how children grapple with challenges like divorce and blended families. School is tough for Jen, but her artistic talents help her make friends, and when she sticks up for herself and her sort-of stepsister, she realizes she's not the only one struggling. The graphic-novel format allows the characters to display a full range of emotions without sacrificing plot. The full-color artwork is energetic and engaging, though an illustration of a structure that resembles a Native American wigwam being used as a play fort may be a questionable choice. The book portrays a diverse community without race being an issue; the main cast is White, and some secondary and background characters are brown skinned.
Warm, fortifying, and cozy—like a drink of apple cider. (author's note) (Graphic novel. 8-14)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-12538-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high...
Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.
Ahmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. In an unexpected turn of events, the two boys and their new friends Farah, a Muslim Belgian girl, and Oscar, a white Belgian boy, successfully scheme for Ahmed to go to school while he remains in hiding the rest of the time. What is at stake for Ahmed is immense, and so is the risk to everyone involved. Marsh invites art and history to motivate her protagonists, drawing parallels to gentiles who protected Jews fleeing Nazi terror and citing present-day political news. This well-crafted and suspenseful novel touches on the topics of refugees and immigrant integration, terrorism, Islam, Islamophobia, and the Syrian war with sensitivity and grace.
A captivating book situated in present-day discourse around the refugee crisis, featuring two boys who stand by their high values in the face of grave risk and succeed in drawing goodwill from others. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30757-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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