No Purchase Necessary

Written by Maria Marianayagam

HarperCollins

978-1-4434-7261-6

256 pp.

Ages 9–12

January 2025 

 

Ajay Anthonipillai and his parents and sister Aarthi recently moved to Bridge Creek to be closer to some family and save money. It's now a three-hour commute for Appa to the city where he is studying for his master's in civil engineering, but the Tamil Sri Lankan family understands the sacrifices that must be made to succeed. While understanding that money is tight and that his parents have very high expectations for him, Ajay really wants to fit in. And so, when taunted by alpha classmate Jacob Underson to steal a Mercury chocolate bar in Scary Al's convenience store, Ajay does it. This one mistake changes everything for Ajay.

 

Jacob refuses the chocolate bar since Ajay hid it in his pants, so Ajay eats the chocolate himself. "It tasted like bliss and guilt." (p. 25) But there's more than candy in the package. There's also the message on the wrapper that tells him he's won Mercury's $1 million Grand Prize. He knows all the good that money would do his family, including helping his aunt's family in Sri Lanka but Ajay knows he doesn't deserve it. In fact, if he hadn't taken it, his classmate Mindy Yu would've won it, grabbing the next bar after him. 

What to do? He has learned much from karate about integrity and respect, as he had from attending Catholic Church with Father Freddie, so Ajay is torn about what to do. Return the wrapper to Scary Al? Give it to Mindy? Confess to his parents? Cash in the ticket? Even as Ajay vacillates between all his options–not unlike Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" for an assignment with which Ajay is struggling–he ends up working for Scary Al at the store, becoming friendly with Mindy who helps him with his English assignment, and fighting and then collaborating with his tormentor Jacob. 

But lies have a life of their own. Some lies beget other lies. Or the lies morph into something completely different. And they can always be exposed. Whether it's because someone lets something slip or the liar is overcome with guilt or because the truth was known all along, lies do unravel, and for Ajay, it's just a question of when and how, not if.

 

Maria Marianayagam, herself a Sri Lankan-Canadian, undoubtedly drew from her own cultural experiences to give life to Ajay and his family. The high regard for education and family and hard work are evident, all solid foundations for Ajay and Aarthi. But these same values are challenged when they intersect with the culture of their new home, in which kids defend themselves when bullied, do extracurricular activities, and try to fit in with their peers. The balancing act of being different people, one at home and both a peer and your parents' child at school is a precarious one and one that challenges Ajay. Maria Marianayagam does not make Ajay a perfect kid who handles it all. She makes him real, struggling with himself and others, trying to do what's right though it might make life harder, and wishing for a break occasionally to just be himself. When Ajay and Aarthi can finally unmask themselves to their parents, it's both refreshing for all and illuminating.

 

Winning a million dollars seems like a dream but for Ajay it becomes a nightmare of conflict between honour and want. Thankfully, the rules of his family and those of the dojo and his faith help guide him to make the best choice and ultimately to enrich his life in unforeseen ways.

Cold

Written by Mariko Tamaki

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-62672-273-6

240 pp.

Ages 12-18

February 2022

He was already getting used to being so much less than he was when he was alive. Maybe because there's something in death that makes being nothing feel natural. Maybe because he had somehow always been a sort of figment. (pg. 49)

On a cold January night, seventeen-year-old Todd Mayer died, naked except for a pair of hand-knitted pink mittens, and found in Rosemary Peacock Park by a dog the next morning. Now a ghost, Todd watches and remembers as his death is investigated by Detectives Greevy and Daniels, seemingly disregarded by classmates at his private boys' school, and considered by Georgia Walker who never even knew Todd. 

 

Georgia hears of Todd's death from Carrie Harper, a new friend who was the former friend of the uber popular Shirley Mason. The girls are still negotiating their newfound friendship and one thing they spend time talking about is Todd's death. In fact, they go to the scene of the crime, discuss alibis and such. But Georgia begins to get a bad feeling when she realizes Todd went to school with her older brother Mark and may have even visited their house. So, as Georgia starts to question her brother and others to learn more about Todd and perhaps his death, Todd, as a ghost, watches as detectives question his virtually-silent peers and his teachers, including Mr. McVeeter, a social studies teacher who offered Todd support and refuge from bullies. But, as he watches and recognizes the mistakes he made and the complexity of his choices and of his feelings, Todd remembers all that led to his death and those involved.

Told in the alternating voices of Georgia and Todd as Todd's death is revealed and investigated, Cold takes a hard look at how the lives of two teens unknowingly come together. Both had recognized they were gay and were finding ways to deal with it for themselves, sometimes with support from others. Still, they were struggling: Todd at a private boys' school where those who were deemed different were persecuted, and Georgia with her mother, a children's book author who tactlessly used her children as the basis for her stories. That may be their only obvious commonality, other than seeking to fit in and avoid harassment, a goal of many school-age young people, but it's their endeavour to find the truth and share that truth that supersedes all. Georgia needs to find out what happened to Todd and how her brother may or may not be involved. Todd needs to take responsibility for his actions which may or may not have led to his death and make things right for those who had trusted him. In Cold, Mariko Tamaki, who has never shied away from weighty issues of young people coming of age, including conflicts in friendship, questions of sexuality and balancing family with friends, tells a complex mystery wrapped in a story of trying to survive challenging social circumstances. While the solution to the mystery of Todd's death is never fully realized until the end, Mariko Tamaki has kept the teens' circumstances so familiar and common that her explanation sadly makes perfect sense.

The cold, hard facts of Cold are that a teen died because he was perceived as different while he was determined to make positive connections with others. He did what he could but others made choices that were ill-considered at best and thoughtless and despicable at worst. And Mariko Tamaki shows us, with hindsight, choices made, independent of intentions, have consequences and we can only hope that they hurt no one and can be endured and even survived.

Tank and Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots

Written by Liam O’Donnell

Illustrated by Mike Deas

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0813-3

163 pp.

Ages 8–11

2016

We all know cheaters, those vile people who manipulate circumstances in their favour, regardless of others.  At the simplest, they are kids who cheat on tests or lie to cover up some misdemeanour.  At worst, they are adults who perpetrate crimes for their own purposes.  It is so satisfying when a cheater gets caught because that’s what they deserve and it’s a small step in making the world a safer and better place for all.  It’s not surprising, thus, that when Tank and Fizz, our intrepid detectives from The Case of the Slime Stampede (Orca, 2015)  are asked by the school Troll Patrol to prove that wealthy and reprehensible classmate Rizzo Rawlins is cheating in the local battle bot competition, that the two monsters are eager to take on the case. If only all cheaters could be caught by Tank and Fizz.

All year, I had watched Rizzo cheat in class.  Math test, science quizzes, coloring contests.  You name it, Rizzo Rawlins cheated.  He bribed the school math whizzes for test answers.  His goons sabotaged classmates’ experiments.  He hired professional artists to do his cut-and-past craft projects. Rizzo Rawlins had to win at everything, every time, any way he could.  I had seen the trail of broken dreams in my schoolmates’ tears.  When I’d seen the sad faces of the Troll Patrol,  I knew Rizzo’s cheating had to stop.  And I was the goblin to make it happen. (pg. 21-22)

But, as is usually the case, everyone knows about the cheating but proving it is far more difficult.  Even with Tank’s code sniffer–her invention to sniff out codes originating from beyond the school–that proves Rizzo’s bot, the Rawlins Reaper, should be disqualified, Principal Weaver refuses to believe Rizzo is anything but a model student, probably because Rizzo’s father makes huge financial donations to the school.  When the two detectives follow Rizzo to the almost complete new stadium, Slurp Stadium, they witness his acquisition of a new illegal part for his bot and his interactions, by screen, with a masked hacker called the Codex.  But the search for evidence of Rizzo’s cheating becomes linked to a situation in which the Codex threatens Mayor Grimlock to suffer unforeseen consequences if the new stadium is ever opened.  The goblin and troll duo undertake surveillance, alongside magic-spinning friend, Aleetha, a lava elf, and discover a conspiracy involving Sanzin Balazar, the wealthy entrepreneur behind SlugCo and the new stadium, a banished demon of goblin legends, and a threat to Slick City of monstrous proportions.  But can they stop the chaos before everything is lost?

Liam O’Donnell has a fun way with words, and more so in his creation of the world in which Tank and Fizz live.

You know that feeling you get when you try to stop a demon from being summoned but accidentally help summon it?  It definitely takes the shine off your scales. (pg. 136)

There are double grubnug-fudge smoothies, glowshroom groves, spicy lizard dogs and choco-slug cookies, and mothers who scratch the scales behind your ears. (Aw.)  And Tank’s inventions, like her spybot and springers, are the contraptions of kids’ dreams. Mike Deas’ graphic novel-type illustrations suggest he got as much amusement as the author in creating the assortment of monsters that populate Slick City and the Tank and Fizz books in general. (Books 3, The Case of the Missing Mage is set for release April 2017.)

From Tank and Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots 

by Liam O'Donnell, illus. by Mikes Deas

Since the book’s dedication is “To goblin detectives and troll tinkerers everywhere”, it seems only right to review The Case of the Battling Bots in October, the month of goblins, trolls, witches, elves and more. Moreover, the book was just nominated for the 2017 Silver Birch Express award, so it’s review at this time is only fitting.  But the outrageous antics of Tank and Fizz, all in good fun and with the best of intentions, will always entertain, regardless of the time of year, as long as early and middle-grade readers enjoy a bit of fun with their creepy and a bit, but not too much, of the graphic-novel  format to dress up a strongly-plotted story.