Trudy’s persistence after initial failure will resonate even with middle graders who’ve never heard of the Fab Four.
“All I had was an invalid mother, three oddball friends, a father who didn’t know I was alive anymore, and a sliver of hope that meeting Paul McCartney could change all that.”
By the time Trudy makes this statement, readers know that she tends to overdramatize her life but also that she is determined to meet Paul McCartney. She is a sixth-grader who explains that she felt exhilarated when, in 1964, she began her elementary school’s Beatles Fan Club, which, by September of junior high, sported 23 members. Now, after April vacation, 1966, everything has changed: Her best friend is hanging out with cheerleaders; she is suddenly being teased about her full name, Gertrude; and her fan club has been reduced to herself, awkward Peter, uncool Jessica, and unkempt Nora. The good news: The Beatles will perform in August in Boston, just 50 miles from Trudy’s Rhode Island home. The text is laden with references to 1960s history, fashion, and popular culture—although air-raid drills go unmentioned. In a nice, perspective-lending touch, elevator music and disposable diapers are predicted for the future. All characters are default white. Trudy’s voice and her relationships with parents and peers ring true to an adolescent slowly making sense of her life and the people in it. Her perseverance, cleverness, and sense of humor will keep readers turning the pages to see if she does meet her favorite Beatle.
Trudy’s persistence after initial failure will resonate even with middle graders who’ve never heard of the Fab Four. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8511-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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