Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This sequel to Holt’s National Book Award winner, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999), revisits Antler, Texas, 30 years later; this time our guide is Toby’s daughter, Rylee. Rylee, 12, is a passionate booster of her tiny hometown. Unlike her mercurial best friend, Twig, she’s blessed with a happy family. Rylee’s stunned by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then heartsick over their faltering friendship. Joe, a new classmate from Brooklyn, provides welcome distraction. He ridicules Antler but warms to self-appointed tour guide Rylee, who piques his interest in Zachary Beaver. Learning how the attacks affected Joe’s family makes 9/11 personal to locals. Stalwart Rylee, navigating tween angst, is engaging, but comprehensive updates on characters from the first novel slow the narrative. Little has changed for the White residents. Antler’s success story is Juan Garcia, the impoverished teen from the Mexican side of town, now a world-famous golfer, his childhood home a tourist attraction. Juan’s affluent extended family includes the brilliant Garcia twins, Rylee’s classmates. A new character, Vietnamese immigrant Mr. Pham, cooks for and lives at the bowling alley’s cafe. He suddenly buys the town’s mansion, planning to open an upscale restaurant. White residents’ struggles, missteps, and achievements are affectionately chronicled; the Garcias and Mr. Pham get no humanizing backstories, and they seem to serve to validate Antler’s post-racial bona fides. Sticks to the shallows. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Horn Book
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The narrator of this sequel to National Book Award winner When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (rev. 11/99) is Rylee Wilson, daughter of the first book's protagonist, Toby. At the beginning of seventh grade, Rylee watches Twig, her former BFF, pull away, seeking new friends and new interests. In a prophetic observation, Toby tells Rylee: "People come and go even when we don't want them to." And one person who unexpectedly comes into Rylee's life is Joe, unhappily transplanted from Brooklyn to Rylee's hometown of Antler, a place he immediately dubs as Nowhere, Texas. As self-proclaimed ambassador Rylee tries to get Joe to accept and appreciate her town (and herself to understand her changed relationship with Twig), the two begin a quest to track down Zachary Beaver, Rylee's father's onetime friend. She wonders about the wisdom of such a search, but, as Joe tells her, "If you're a true friend, you're a friend for life." Toby, now a social studies teacher, believes that history is about people. Mirroring that belief, Holt deftly intertwines the stories of the individuals from both books, each set at a pivotal time in our country's past, the earlier work during the Vietnam War and the latter in the aftermath of 9/11. This volume is a literary reunion of sorts, but more important is its deep examination of the meaning and responsibilities of friendship, family, and community. While Holt's latest can stand alone, its considerable strengths shine brighter when read with Zachary Beaver [see also "Hello Again" on page 34]. (c) Copyright 2023. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.