Looking Up
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Timmy Failure series comes a quirky and heartwarming middle grade novel about a girl struggling with loneliness and the curveballs of life—featuring black and white illustrations throughout!
Living alone with her mother in a poorer part of town, Saint—a girl drawn to medieval knights, lost causes, and the protection of birthday piñatas—sees the neighborhood she has always known and loved disappearing around her: old homes being torn down and replaced by fancy condos and coffee shops. But when her favorite creaky old toy store is demolished, she knows she must act.
Enlisting the help of Daniel “Chance” McGibbons, a quiet, round-faced boy who lives across the street (and whose house also faces the wrecking ball), Saint hatches a plan to save what is left of her beloved hometown.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this deceptively funny illustrated novel about loneliness and grief, Pastis (the Timmy Failure series) introduces a girl striving to save her town from gentrification by latte-sipping hipsters. Saint has a massive crush on neighbor kid Daniel, who walks with a cane. Her heightened emotions compel her to steal his birthday piñata, throw eggs at his drawings, and show up at his door dressed as a skeleton knight speaking in medieval English ("Ye are my Daniel in Distress," she pronounces). On top of her confusing emotions surrounding her crush, Saint is worried about all the fancy new coffee shops and condos springing up around town; she's especially worried about how these new developments have compelled community members to move away. When she learns that Daniel will soon be leaving, too, she persuades him to aid her in her quest to save the town from developers. Pastis's distinctive, heavily lined b&w illustrations effectively convey the protagonists' depth of emotion via amiable faces composed of two dots for eyes and a c-curve nose, while prose contains his signature absurd humor, which lightens this meditation on mourning. Characters' skin tone reflects the white of the paper. Ages 8–12.
