Altebrando neatly integrates humor and poignancy into a middle-grade tale of change.
When 12-year-old Kate learns that her beloved home, Big Red, is going on the market, she is determined to stop the sale—or at least postpone it until her first dance competition.
Kate tells the story in believable preteen prose, interspersed with texts to her best friends, Stella and Naveen. “Grabbing my phone and falling onto the bed, I texted Stella, My life is over. She wrote back, ??? I tapped out, Selling Big Red.” After seeking ideas from brainy Naveen, Kate persuades him and Stella to help sabotage sales to prospective buyers. There are several very funny scenes centered on efforts to use bad smells (Naveen has placed “fecal matter” and “spoiled food” at the top of his list of resources) and annoying noises—before the real estate agent catches on. By this time, readers will love Kate enough to keep reading. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe that Kate’s parents show little empathy about Kate’s dancing dilemma, since they met each other through their own musicianship and still live alternative, arts-oriented lifestyles. However, their struggles and triumphs, along with their daughter’s, augment the story—as do the dioramas that Kate creates, first as a school assignment and then as her own, self-discovered therapy. Family finances, transcendence via the arts, pet death and adult clinical depression are all gently eased into a pleasing tale. Final illustrations not seen.
Altebrando neatly integrates humor and poignancy into a middle-grade tale of change. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7624-5681-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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