by Patricia Reilly Giff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2015
A moving quest of family, survival, and home.
When a Mexican family stops hearing from the eldest brother, working in the States, 12-year-old Mateo risks everything and runs away in search of Julian.
In this timely novel, Mateo leaves his home, Abuelita, Mami, and the youngest brother, Lucas, in the middle of the night—with no more than a backpack, notepad, pesos, and a little food and water—and heads north for Arkansas, Julian’s last known whereabouts. Injured and abandoned, Mateo meets Angel, a savvy, strong young girl. Though upon her introduction, Angel is far from feeble or fragile, as the story advances, her character loses the strength and depth she initially brings to the journey. Cognizant of the dangers before them, they swim the river into Texas undetected and proceed, often at odds while simultaneously entirely dependent on each other. The chapters toggle among Mateo’s narration, his journal entries, his memories, and dreams, which all hint at syncopated moments of magical realism, like so many Mexican tales. Two-time Newbery Honor winner Giff successfully delivers an accessibly fast-paced, novella-length adventure; moreover, its colorful, stunning cover will surely attract readers. Naturally there is Spanish punctuating the novel, though it’s minimal; Mateo’s commentary on his English lessons feels more like vocabulary building for native English speakers than the introductory vocabulary a native Spanish speaker would be learning.
A moving quest of family, survival, and home. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-74482-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
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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
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