An accurate and compassionate picture of growing up with ADHD is the icing on the cake of this well-told novel
Gerber, who tackled scoliosis with Braced (2017), turns her lens on a young woman with ADHD.
Massachusetts seventh-grader Clea loves magic and chess, hates math, and wants to be a better friend, sister, and student. No matter how hard she tries, she struggles to finish homework and tests on time, putting her spot on the chess team in jeopardy. Meanwhile friendships hit a snag when she impulsively blurts out sensitive information her best friend and chess teammate, Red, would rather keep secret. When teachers and the school counselor suggest her struggles may be related to ADHD, Clea is resistant to diagnosis and treatment, considering it a black mark and further evidence that she is somehow broken. Through it all a friendship blooms with Sanam, another chess teammate, who encourages Clea with her own story of learning differences and her persistent optimism. Though not a biographical story, Gerber’s tender first-person narrative perfectly resonates with the ADHD experience, which she knows firsthand. The supportive world Clea inhabits both at home and at school is an ideal place free of stigma; would that all students with learning differences experience such in real life. Gerber’s text and author’s note feature excellent information and resources for ADHD brains and the hearts who love them. Clea and Red present as white while Sanam’s name suggests she’s Middle Eastern or South Asian.
An accurate and compassionate picture of growing up with ADHD is the icing on the cake of this well-told novel . (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-18597-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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