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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | J FICTION RIV | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | J FICTION RIV | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J FICTION RIV | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J FICTION RIV | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Can Kit's super-weird superpower save her world?
Twelve-year-old kit (with a small k) likes shopping at the flea market with her best friend, Clem, roller-skating, climbing to the roof to look at the stars, and volunteering at an animal shelter. Until suddenly she has a really big, really strange secret that makes life more complicated than she's prepared for: Sometimes, without warning, she turns into a tiny naked mole rat.
It first happened as kit watched Clem fall and get hurt during a performance with her acrobatic-troupe family on TV. Since then, the transformations keep coming. Kit can't tell Clem, because Clem hasn't been herself after the accident. She's mad and gloomy and keeping a secret of her own: the real reason she fell.
Months later, kit and Clem still haven't figured out how to deal with all the ways they have changed--both inside and out. Somehow, kit has to save the day. But she's no hero, and turning into a naked mole rat isn't a superpower. Or is it?
Author Notes
Karen Rivers 's books have been nominated for a wide range of literary awards and have been published in multiple languages. When she's not writing, reading, or teaching other people how to write, she can usually be found hiking and taking photos in the forest that flourishes behind her tiny old house in Victoria, British Columbia, where she lives with her two kids, three dogs, and three birds. Find her online at karenrivers.com and on Twitter: @karenrivers.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Eleven-year-old kit was so tiny when she was born that her single mother deemed her "too small for capital letters." Since then, she's been told two things about that day: diagnosed with alopecia, she "looked like a naked mole rat," and her birth saved her mother, who suffers from acute anxiety. In Brooklyn, kit resents her mom's inability to leave home and the savior role her mother has thrust upon her ("kit" stands for "keep it together"), especially after her best friend, Clem, is hurt performing on television with her acrobat family. This event changes both girls: Clem hides the secret of how she fell, and kit believes that she turned into a naked mole rat when she witnessed the tumble. The story picks up a year later, and both friends are still hiding their secrets. Together, they must find the courage to confront difficult truths. Rivers (The Girl in the Well Is Me) realistically portrays the challenge of living with anxiety and the pressures of family responsibility. Complex and moving, this story takes an unvarnished look at what it means to be true to oneself as well as loved ones. Ages 8--12. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Oct.)
Horn Book Review
Kit and Clem have a well-oiled friendship that includes Clem's twin brother Jorge and another friend, Jackson. It all starts to unravel, however, when a shocking event occurs. Clem, part of a family of acrobats, suffers a serious injury while performing on a reality TV show. Kit's reaction to this news is to morph (involuntarily and temporarily) into a naked mole rat. It's a bold inciting incident-and it's only the beginning of the off-kilter action and widespread anxieties of this novel's world. The jaunty, cartoonish book cover gives no hint of the darkness within. Kit's mother, a former singing sensation, lives with constant fear due to a mental illness. Kit herself lives with alopecia universalis (congenital baldness). There's a burglar wearing a Batman mask loose in the neighborhood. Clem and Jorge discover that their grandfather died at Jonestown. Kit finds out the true identity of her father. The story is witty and stylish with ample quirky insights, but also breathless, with italic-studded dialogue amping up the pace. Reading it is like flitting around the internet, perching briefly on odd websites-obscure animals, unusual neuroses, strange afflictions, cults, peculiar crimes. Sarah Ellis November/December 2019 p.97(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Kit and Clem are best friends, and both are dealing with life-changing adversity.Kit is tiny and afflicted with both alopecia universalis (a complete lack of hair that strangers interpret as a result of chemotherapy) and a dysfunctional mother who named her "kit"not Kitas a reminder to herself to "keep it together." Clem, a member of her Latinx family's acrobatic team, is badly injured during a televised performance. Once she's recovered from the worst of her injuries, Clem endures her distress by taking on an angry goth identity that contrasts sharply with her previous image. Meanwhile, kit, who is white, copes with anxiety (mostly caused by her mother) by turning into a naked mole rat (the ugly animal her mother often compares her to) and scurrying for coveror so she believes. The girls' stories are presented in third-person chapters that seamlessly alternate, not only providing an intimate view of each character's largely hidden despair, but also revealing their bemused, mostly concealed judgments of each other, as their coping mechanisms serve to drive them apart. A rich cast of secondary characters enhances the tale, including kit's mom's somewhat witchy helper and the young teens' former friend, a kindly boy who has many problems of his own. An author's note explores anxiety disorder.A warm coming-of-age story populated with a cast of memorable characters. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Rivers (You Are The Everything, 2018) threads rich veins of metaphor and personal transformation into this tale of preteen trauma and recovery. Born prematurely and compared to a naked mole rat by her fond but seriously agoraphobic single mom, kit-with-a-small- k reaches age 11 small of stature, bald from alopecia, and often mistaken for a boy. Having cut ties with one friend, Jackson, who deals with the departure of his own dad by showing her documentary proof of her long-gone father's death and kept in a holding pattern with another, Clem, who is pretending to be all right but has been saddled with lingering headaches and depression since a serious fall, kit is short on confidantes when a panic attack temporarily turns her into a small, wrinkled rodent. Along with folding in this whiff of fantasy (kit's not the only character here who, at least seemingly, has an animal alter ego), Rivers handles all the domestic and interpersonal drama with a light touch that keeps things from turning soapy. kit turns out to be a steady, resolute protagonist as she rightly affirms, naked mole rats may be homely but in several ways they are superheroes of the animal world. Readers will come away admiring her knack for resolving issues and conflicts.--John Peters Copyright 2010 Booklist
