A story that features a clear educational message and diverse, engaging characters, with an aspiring scientist at its center.
A young science enthusiast discovers a spider and shares her excitement with her parents and classmates in Norton’s debut middle-grade novel.
Fifth-grader Madeleine Morales is known to all as “Muddy” after a messy incident at a nearby pond. When she discovers a large spider building a web outside her house, she’s instantly enamored and determined to learn everything she can about the arachnid’s habits and habitat. Muddy gets help in her pursuit of knowledge from her parents, despite Papá’s aversion to arachnids; from her teacher, who introduces new subjects with rap lyrics; and from a diverse collection of classmates. Muddy is devastated when the spider, which she named Hilandera, goes missing after a few days, but she uses further research and hypothesis-testing to discover what happened. The book’s character diversity feels natural rather than forced, and Muddy’s closest friends—Gregory, always on the hunt for snacks; Ava, who has a fondness for bathroom humor; and Javier, a devoted pet owner—make a delightful crew that’s willing to indulge Muddy’s new fascination with spiders before dragging her off for another romp in the pond. The book is sometimes a bit too enamored of its own turns of phrase; “arach-a-doo,” for example, is Ava’s rendering of “arachnid,” and after Muddy identifies a shape in Hilandera’s web as a “zigzaggin’ zipper,” she uses that label every time she refers to it. However, Norton does an effective job of introducing educational vocabulary without becoming didactic. Muddy’s blend of Spanish and English flows naturally, although one of Norton’s word choices may be inappropriate for some markets: in the book’s Mexican- and Central American-influenced Spanish,“bicho” is the appropriate word for the insects that make up Hilandera’s diet, but to Puerto Rican readers, that same word is a reference to male anatomy. This isn’t addressed in the book’s glossaries, which provide pronunciations and definitions for the Spanish words and the scientific terms throughout the text.
A story that features a clear educational message and diverse, engaging characters, with an aspiring scientist at its center.Pub Date: March 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940834-29-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Progressive Rising Phoenix Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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