Stoutly non-speciesist, this is an effervescent delight.
With the future of their valley home at stake, two brave young rabbits take up farming.
The farm’s newbie human owners include the Harvey parents, country enthusiasts newly liberated from office life; son Carl, 10, who misses Brooklyn; daughter Marie, 1; and the family’s shiba inu, Foxy. When an intimidating local developer drops by, hoping to pressure the naïve Harveys into selling, young Alice and her brother, Thistle, two rabbits, overhear the sales pitch. After Lester, a burrow elder who’s eaten his way through farm catalogs, tells them that development will destroy their valley, Alice hatches a plan to make the Harveys’ farm succeed. Challenges quickly mount. To obtain and plant seeds, weed, and keep hungry critters away from them when they sprout, Alice must incentivize interspecies cooperation. Recruits, wild and tame, are needed: a fox, bald eagle, chipmunks, voles, Foxy, baby Marie (an adept interspecies interpreter), and Carl, providing human cover for the rabbit farmers. The effort will eventually ensnare neighbors, ornithologists, and locavore chefs along with the editors of Hipster Farmer magazine. Like the denizens of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, these characters—animal and human, predator and prey—are lovingly observed. They are a deeply engaging, mostly endearing bunch whose natures may put them at odds but who share a world. Human characters follow a White default.
Stoutly non-speciesist, this is an effervescent delight. (author's note) (Animal fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-22455-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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