“We don’t get to keep everyone we love who has ever lived. But we do get to remember them”: so true.
Observations, advice, comfort, and ways of thinking about one of life’s “ordinary terrible things.”
Higginbotham follows up Divorce Is the Worst (2015) with a dark-skinned child at Gramma’s wake and funeral. People say, “I know exactly how you feel,” “She’s in a better place,” and like platitudes, and the child reacts with hurt anger: “Would I be in a better place if I died?!!” Exchanges continue as the child gets home afterward, changes clothes, imagines talking with Gramma once again, asks those hard questions (“Why do we have to die?”), then follows Dad outside to stand in, and tend to, Gramma’s garden. The collage illustrations, constructed on squares of brown-paper bag with patchwork pieces of cut photos and cloth, have a somber look that brightens when corners and angles of flower and vegetable garden appear. The author’s own neatly printed background comments get a little metaphysical, but in general they are spot-on—in validating the child’s response to the aforementioned platitudes, in leaving room for individual beliefs about an afterlife, and in suggesting ways to ease the immediate sense of loss. A closing set of simple memorial activities will also be helpful, though some readers may find the references in that section (and, obliquely, earlier) to the death of a pet jarring in this context.
“We don’t get to keep everyone we love who has ever lived. But we do get to remember them”: so true. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-155861-925-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that.
Beatrice Zinker is a kinder, gentler Judy Moody.
Beatrice doesn’t want to be fit in a box. Her first word was “WOW,” not “Mom.” She does her best thinking upside down and prefers to dress like a ninja. Like Judy Moody, she has patient parents and a somewhat annoying younger brother. (She also has a perfectly ordinary older sister.) Beatrice spends all summer planning a top-secret spy operation complete with secret codes and a secret language (pig Latin). But on the first day of third grade, her best friend, Lenny (short for Eleanor), shows up in a dress, with a new friend who wants to play veterinarian at recess. Beatrice, essentially a kind if somewhat quirky kid, struggles to see the upside of the situation and ends up with two friends instead of one. Line drawings on almost every spread add to the humor and make the book accessible to readers who might otherwise balk at its 160 pages. Thankfully, the rhymes in the text do not continue past the first chapter. Children will enjoy the frequent puns and Beatrice’s preference for climbing trees and hanging upside down. The story drifts dangerously close to pedantry when Beatrice asks for advice from a grandmotherly neighbor but is saved by likable characters and upside-down cake. Beatrice seems to be white; Lenny’s surname, Santos, suggests that she may be Latina; their school is a diverse one.
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6738-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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