An artfully rendered, sweetly impressive coming-of-age journey.
In Rodriguez’s quasi-memoir, eighth grade finds 13-year-old Steph at a crossroads in the Bronx circa 2000.
Even though high school’s fast approaching, Steph can’t quite shake off her overprotective mom, who insists on walking her to school every morning and expects Steph to come straight home after school. How embarrassing! To pursue her dreams of becoming an artist, Steph decides to apply to LaGuardia High School, an art school in Manhattan. Only one problem: Her mom does NOT want her to go to a public school. Undeterred in her artistic ambitions, Steph preps to get into LaGuardia with the help of Ms. Santiago, her art teacher. The young artist, however, keeps her plans mostly a secret, stirring up a web of lies for her mom, Ms. Santiago, and even her best friends, Tiff and Ana. Meanwhile, cracks start forming in her once-solid friendships with Tiff and Ana. While Tiff derides Steph’s art goals, Ana gets chummy with Steph’s schoolyard bullies. Will Steph get into LaGuardia in one piece? Upbeat and effervescent, Rodriguez’s middle-grade graphic novel debut elicits a lot of laughs. The author lovingly depicts the Bronx to its brightest and fullest colors, sprinkling in a few pop-culture callbacks to the early 2000s. A nuanced focus on the central relationship between daughter and mother (who emigrated from the Dominican Republic at 11) provides a potent cross-generational dialogue. Most characters are cued as Latine.
An artfully rendered, sweetly impressive coming-of-age journey. (author’s note) (Graphic novel. 8-12)Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-451-48065-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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