Just My Luck

July 15, 2016
Things haven't really changed for awkward San Antonio middle schooler Zack Delacruz.Even after he helped save the sixth-grade dance in Me and My Big Mouth (2015), the Latino boy still finds it hard to be a somebody at school. More troubling, he remains friendless, aside from the ever loyal Marquis, a black boy. Plus, the school bully, Jose, can't seem to stop teasing Zack whenever he can. A new Indian-American girl named Abhi adds a new wrinkle to this well-worn story. Captivated, Zack realizes that he needs to talk to this mysterious girl with ice-gray eyes. Once Anderson establishes the central tension, the story quickly turns into a meandering chronicle of Zack's misfortune. Of course, everything goes awry for Zack, beginning and unfortunately not ending with him nailing Abhi during a game of dodgeball. Could Zack be cursed? This leap in logic perfectly encapsulates a middle school mindset, mining a lot of laughs from Zack's amusing attempts to remove the so-called curse. However, the author disregards charged themes, including a side plot about Zack's parents' divorce, to give ample space to high jinks. As Zack discovers that it's hard to talk to Abhi, the story keeps marching forward to Fiesta-val, the citywide fall festival. Slapstick set pieces soon trump gentle humor, leading to an out-of-nowhere ending that raises a lot of unnecessary questions. A bubbly, multicultural sequel with missed potential. (Fiction. 9-13)

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July 1, 2016
Grades 5-7 In this sequel to Zack Delacruz: Me and My Big Mouth (2015), Anderson returns to San Antonio's Davy Crockett Middle School for further ups and downs in the life of a hapless sixth-grader. Here, a few days before the school's Fiesta-val fund-raiser, Zack not only manages to rip open his pants in front of the entire lunchroom, he also inadvertently clobbers Abhijana, a magnetic but strangely standoffish new student. Further efforts to attract Abhi's attention lead to a first ride on a public bus, getting lost in a scary, run-down neighborhood, and dousing himself with pungent attraction cologne. Finally, Zack gets an enlightening lecture from a classmate about how Abhi is not deliberately ignoring himshe's hard of hearing and reluctant to advertise the fact for fear of being categorized by her disability. The racially and ethnically diverse cast of students and teachers are given faces, thanks to portrait gallery endpapers, and readers will find many of their own anxieties addressed in Zack's mishaps and relieved in his eventual triumphs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)