A fun read for any sleuths-in-training.
Join Paloma Marquez as she solves the mystery of Frida Kahlo’s missing peacock ring.
Biracial Paloma Marquez is a 12-year-old half-Mexican, half-white girl from Kansas City, Kansas. Paloma possesses almost no memories of her deceased father but hopes to reconnect with her Mexican heritage during her first trip to his homeland. While staying in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, Paloma explores Casa Azul, artist Frida Kahlo’s childhood home–turned-museum, and instantly becomes a fan of Frida’s artwork. Paloma is supposed to take Spanish classes and art history classes, but there’s a mystery unfolding in Casa Azul. Kahlo’s peacock ring is missing, and it is imperative that Paloma and her new friends, local siblings Gael and Lizzie, find it before it is too late. But Gael and Lizzie, who pose as Paloma’s Spanish tutors from the university, are not who they seem….Paloma is a fan of fictional teen supersleuth Lulu Pennywhistle, who inspires her to try to solve the mystery of the missing peacock ring. The mystery, while engaging, is not particularly intricate. Readers will have little trouble solving it before Paloma and her friends do, making it more an introduction to the genre than one for readers accustomed to it. Spanish is used throughout the text with translations following almost immediately.
A fun read for any sleuths-in-training. (author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-15931-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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