Sweetly woven.
In this heartwarming tale, a pair of freshly acquainted half sisters embark on a small adventure to meet their estranged Colombian father.
For Mattie, being the new kid in seventh grade gets even weirder when she notices popular Mercedes, who looks almost exactly like her. Mercedes, meanwhile, would rather not draw attention to the fact that dorky Mattie strongly resembles her. When the girls realize they’re half sisters who share the same Colombian dad, their discovery flips the script. Having recently moved to California from Minnesota thanks to her mom’s marriage to her new stepfather, a man with two sons of his own, anxiety-ridden Mattie is finding it difficult to settle into her blended family. For short-tempered Mercedes, home life also leaves much to be desired: an absent workaholic mom who’s always traveling, a little half brother who gets to spend time with his dad, and a fancy, sterile house with a live-in nanny. The opportunity to meet Francisco Gómez Flores, their renowned anthropologist father, lands at their feet when they learn he will be a visiting professor at a nearby college. This novel rests upon a classic premise and treads familiar narrative beats, but thanks to Fajardo’s keen writing, Mattie’s and Mercedes’ journeys as they bond and grow familial ties earns its sweet ending. Though Operation D.A.D. drags on for a comically long time, the author bolsters strong alternating chapters from each girl’s perspective with a satisfying portrayal of a family finally brought together.
Sweetly woven. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9590-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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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