Eye-opening and heartwarming.
A sixth grader with cerebral palsy learns that magic takes many forms.
Though she’d rather attend a magic school, Lil Evers, who uses a motorized wheelchair and alternates between talking and using a speech device, currently attends the Exceptional Children’s class at Willow Street Middle School. There, Lil and her friends, Scoot and Dora, are segregated from the rest of the student body by the assistant principal, who disguises her ableism as concern for their safety. Undaunted, the friends create their own magic school with their imaginations. When a lucky escape from bullies sparks rumors that the role-playing trio’s magic is real, Willow Street’s students inundate Lil and her friends with good luck charm requests—and the spells seemingly work! But not everyone’s happy. Someone’s following Lil and leaving threatening notes. And in conservative, economically depressed Eden Point, North Carolina, rumors of magic—“the devil’s work”—could lead to the already struggling middle school’s closure. The mother-daughter author duo, one of whom uses a wheelchair and speech device, highlight such topics as education laws while emphasizing the importance of community and hope. Though some secondary characters feel cliched, Lil’s portrayal is refreshingly nuanced; her frustration with augmentative communication and ambivalence about transitioning to mainstreaming are sympathetic, and the bonds among her friend group are endearing. Lil and Dora read white, and Scoot is cued Black and neurodivergent.
Eye-opening and heartwarming. (authors’ note, discussion questions, activities) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780316581264
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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