With magic and a bit of danger, and touching on themes of family, loss, friendship, misunderstandings, kindness, and second...
Stanley’s fantasy offers an enticing blend of suspense, an ancient curse, a lonely girl, a hint of romance, and a fairy-tale trope.
When Joplin’s estranged grandfather, a famous yet reclusive author, dies, her mother insists she take something of his to remember him by. Joplin chooses a broken, centuries-old delftware platter. Once mended and hanging on her wall, the lonely 11-year-old white girl, friendless and bullied at school, admires the painted girl in the platter’s center and wishes for a friend. The next morning, the Dutch girl from the platter is sitting in the garden! Sofie is cursed, forced to grant any wishes made by the platter’s owner. With the help of a new friend, fellow lunchtime-hider-in-the-library Barrett, a white boy who, like Joplin, has “just the right amount of geekiness,” Joplin attempts to free Sofie. After Sofie’s kidnapping by the centuries-old, menacing alchemist who placed the curse, the kids devise a plan, with some adult help, to reverse the curse. First-person narrator Joplin is a likable, sensitive girl whose middle school travails will ring true with readers. The story of how the platter came to Joplin’s grandfather nicely connects Sofie and Joplin’s mother. An afterword revealing the book’s connections to the author is moving.
With magic and a bit of danger, and touching on themes of family, loss, friendship, misunderstandings, kindness, and second chances, Joplin and Sofie’s story is not soon forgotten. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-242370-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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