Passable.
In the small prairie town of Riverway, sixth grader Hannah is troubled: Her beloved farmer dad, dubbed the Canola King, has been missing for four months.
Pushy uncle Fergus keeps coming over, giving unsolicited advice and cooking subpar meals. When Hannah’s best friend, Sam, claims to have seen a ghost that looked like her missing father, Hannah at first dismisses it—“My dad cannot be a ghost because he is alive.” She decides to investigate, recording her progress with the case in the grief journal her concerned mom gave her to help her cope. But Hannah discovers it’s hard to find clues when the trail has gone cold, especially with an invasive, cloyingly sweet school counselor getting into her business. Debut author Hards’ story is told through Hannah’s first-person narration, which tells more than it shows. The writing often fails to convey the depth of emotion a missing parent would be expected to evoke. One chapter is written in rhyming couplets that scan awkwardly and are organized into paragraphs of text: “Click! That’s the sound Tim’s key made as it slid into Ms. Grant’s door. Tim (previously known as Tim the Timid) was the Hall Monitor of lore!” Although she’s not given an explicit label, Hannah struggles with paying attention in class and is cued as neurodivergent; by the end of the book, she’s being evaluated and given support and validation. Hannah and her family present white; Sam is of Filipino descent.
Passable. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781944020910
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Fabled Films
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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