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.
Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. 11-14)Ĭhainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.Įvery 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. This will appeal to a wide range of middle-school readers and would make a great book-club or classroom discussion. Completely without foreshadowing, it adds both gravitas and clarity to the entire story, which turns out to be about privilege, perception and the fallibility of parents. The story of familiar middle-school tribulations is engaging, but fails to pick up steam until it lands in a late surprise twist. Could it be that Walk is the only black kid at the very private school? Or that Kirsten shows signs of an eating disorder, has lost her best friend to the wiles of the rich and snobby Brianna Hanna-Hines and seems to have no desire to fit in with the popular crowd? Choldenko’s talent for characters and conversation brings the two voices instantly to life in alternating points of view (Kirsten’s chapters in first-person, Walk’s in third, for a slight off-kilter feeling). This earns them a detention together, and they strike up an easy friendship, which seems to make their mothers uneasy for some reason. |y .Kirsten and Walk start the first day of seventh grade with one thing in common: They’re both late.
|a Overweight persons |v Juvenile fiction. |a Decoding demand: 88 (very high) |a Semantic demand: 100 (very high) |a Syntactic demand: 71 (high) |a Structure demand: 86 (very high) |b Lexile |a Seventh-graders Kirsten and Walk alternate telling how race, wealth, and weight shape their relationships as they and other misfits stand up to a mean classmate, even as they are uncovering a long-kept secret about themselves. |a Originally published: Orlando : Harcourt, c2007. |a If a tree falls at lunch period / |c Gennifer Choldenko.
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