A lighthearted fantasy that, while easily read, is as intricately structured as a spider's web. The arachnids in question are hatched just in time to be preserved in ice as the Ice Age clamps down; in a series of happenstances succinctly summarized in a preface, they make their way from Russia to 20th- century Vermont, where their sudden appearance after accidentally thawing precipitates a heart attack on the part of the truck driver who's taking them to researchers at Harvard University. The first fellow creatures the escaped spiders see are seven schoolgirls, the Tattletales: ``Each spider picked out a girl to be its mother.'' But the devotion inspired by this imprinting soon curdles into hate as, one by one, the spiders seek out their loved ones in the local school and come to dire demises—luckily, since (though only the reader knows this until the end) the spiders have a deadly bite. Meanwhile, nice teacher Miss Earth tries to get the Tattletales and their male rivals, the Copycats, to cooperate in a class Halloween skit; there's a comic romance between the hospitalized truck driver and Nurse Lark, despite curmudgeonly Head Nurse Crisp; and obnoxious TV muckraker Meg Snoople prowls in a helicopter, trying to incite trouble so that she can report it. In a grand finale, the penultimate spider bites the beloved Miss Earth, who is saved, in the best classic tradition, with the help of all (including the insistent Snoople), by an ingenious and perfectly childlike cure. A fast, delightfully entertaining romp. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-68965-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Miranda’s book counts the monsters gathering at a birthday party, while a simple rhyming text keeps the tally and surveys the action: “Seven starved monsters are licking the dishes./Eight blow out candles and make birthday wishes.” The counting proceeds to ten, then by tens to fifty, then gradually returns to one, which makes the monster’s mother, a purple pin-headed octopus, very happy. The book is surprisingly effective due to Powell’s artwork; the color has texture and density, as if it were poured onto the page, but the real attention-getter is the singularity of every monster attendee. They are highly individual and, therefore, eminently countable. As the numbers start crawling upward, it is both fun and a challenge to try to recognize monsters who have appeared in previous pages, or to attempt to stay focused when counting the swirling or bunched creatures. The story has glints of humor, and in combination with the illustrations is a grand addition to the counting shelf. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201835-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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