An amusing story showcasing Métis humor at its finest.
Introduces a delightful Métis family that many Indigenous people will relate to, especially through their joking, and that all readers will love getting to know.
Twelve-year-old Maggie Lou’s brilliant ideas get her (and sometimes her siblings) into mischief and inspire her nickname, Firefox. After seeing Maggie Lou play fighting outside, Moshôm, her grandfather, offers to teach her how to box. However, boxing is not as exhilarating at first as she imagined it to be. She needs to “know how to listen and follow directions” and is put to work mopping the ring. She also gets picked on by some sexist boys and finds the drills boring. But she follows Moshôm’s teachings—and has the upper hand when it finally comes time to step in the ring. Over summer vacation, Maggie Lou keeps busy building things from her notebook labeled “Plans to Dominate the World,” and she gets Dad to allow her to help out with his construction crew. Surrounded by the women in her family, Maggie Lou learns how to shoot her mom’s Winchester rifle in preparation for hunting season. After an unsuccessful hunt with her uncle and older brother, all three become the center of their family’s teasing. Métis author Bowes weaves cultural elements, including Northern Michif words, into this charming story that skillfully captures sweetly hilarious and loving everyday moments. Black-and-white illustrations enhance the text.
An amusing story showcasing Métis humor at its finest. (author’s note, glossary) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781773068817
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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
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