Someone's Gonna End Up Crying
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this authentic and heartfelt middle-grade novel, Maple uses her artwork to help sort through sibling relationships, school drama, and her parents’ increasingly fraught marriage. Ten-year-old Maple can’t wait for summer: No more math! Adventures with her friends! Best of all, she and Dad are finally going to build a real treehouse. Or are they? Lately Dad has been quick to storm off when he argues with Mom, which happens more and more. Maple seeks refuge in her sketchbook, filling it with comics and other drawings and posing the questions she can’t bring herself to ask anywhere else. She imagines “Dadlandia,” a place that Dad whooshes off to when he’s gone. Maple confides in her favorite tree—her namesake—that she wishes Dad would come home for good. But eventually, Maple will need to step outside her imagination and confront what’s happening for real. For that, she will need support from friends and family—and strength and courage from within. Celebrated author Jo Knowles delivers complex characters and emotions with care, while illustrator Glynnis Fawkes’s powerful illustrations perfectly capture Maple’s creative spirit, her struggles, and her capacity for hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Aspiring graphic novelist Maple Owens uses her sketchbook as a private diary where she can illustrate whatever's on her mind. The sensitive almost 11-year-old, known in her family as an overthinker and a wallflower, frequently doodles her alter ego Captain Ladybug—a bold superhero whose decisive actions bring joy to an adoring public. In reality, though, Maple agonizes about her parents' increasingly fraught relationship and the pressure of acing math quizzes to earn a class ice-cream party. She comforts herself by playing with her older siblings and planning the fort that her father has for two summers promised to help build in her beloved namesake tree. But she worries as her parents' arguments grow increasingly bitter and frequent, and Maple's dad starts disappearing for longer stretches. Knowles (Meant to Be) works Maple's anxieties and her messy, often conflicting feelings about her parents' deteriorating relationship into an emotionally complex tale that, through the protagonist's introspective first-person voice, smartly considers parental and sibling dynamics and art's restorative nature. Loose-lined b&w spreads from Maple's sketchbook, rendered by Fawkes (Charlotte Bronte Before Jane Eyre), offer moments of levity throughout. Character skin tones largely echo the white of the page. Ages 9–12. Author's agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. Illustrator's agent: Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary.
