Likable characters in humorous situations make for a promising series opener.
Poor Pippa! Her desire to fill the hole left by her best friend’s move is so great that she tells a whopper to make a new friend. Her self-reflective, humorous journal tells all.
Pippa is like many 10-year-olds: obsessed with a pop singer (Tiffany J), insecure when a friend moves away, and filled with big dreams. One thing is clear: she will never be a singer. Her music teacher even discourages her from singing in the chorus! When popular girl Catie Brown sits next to her and shows an interest in the TV show Voice Factor, Pippa lets slip a lie: “I auditioned for it.” And, since she has imagined her audition so many times, she goes on to describe the amazing success of her singing voice and the standing ovation from the judges. Their friendship grows on this lie, and Pippa goes to great lengths (and many more lies) to protect the fib. When the truth finally comes out, Pippa weathers the awkward storm. While the resolution might be a tad predictable for middle-grade squabbles, readers will get a good glimpse at how kids can untangle themselves from complicated predicaments. Droll line drawings decorate Pippa’s journal, making this a good bridge book to longer chapter books.
Likable characters in humorous situations make for a promising series opener. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2328-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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