A heartwarming read with a powerful message: The lonely and jaded can heal with the love of an empathetic friend.
As they experience growing pains and family problems, loner middle school students in small-town Utah unknowingly support one another on unexpected journeys of self-discovery.
Eleven-year-old Gerty is proud. She knows exactly what she wants and has the grit to get it. She seeks refuge from her survivalist parents in her grandmother Nanny Pat’s barn, where she secretly builds an ultralight and dreams of one day being in the Civil Air Patrol. Gerty shares lunches in the school counselor’s office twice a week with fellow new student Hayes; both of them need support with social skills. While he struggles with rebuilding a relationship with his ex-con mother and suffers from severe self-doubt, Hayes has a strong inner fire that is one spark from igniting. When turmoil ensues in each of their home lives, Gerty and Hayes seek one another’s company. Vibrant depictions of the characters’ experiences paired with witty dialogue immerse readers in the main characters’ lives. Their heart-wrenching backstories and realistic experiences evoke a deep level of empathy. With chapters purposely shifting from character to character, readers slowly but satisfyingly become part of their lives and friendship and cannot help but root for them until the very end. Main characters are cued White; the school counselor is coded Black.
A heartwarming read with a powerful message: The lonely and jaded can heal with the love of an empathetic friend. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781665918626
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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