A meandering, idealistic tale for budding scientists.
After 10-year-old Henry witnesses the fall of a meteorite, disaster finds his Maine home.
Henry Bower, of Bower Hill Road, comes from a family of water dowsers, but he hasn’t yet shown any talent in this area—his current skills include reading the most books at the library and writing questions about the world in his home-schooling notebook. Henry has a passion for rocks and minerals and is thrilled when he and his little sister find a meteorite to rival the 31-ton Ahnighito in Greenland. An author’s note describes, among other things, the controversy over its fate and the “sad and disturbing history of the Inughuit people brought to New York City, along with the meteorite.” Henry tries to keep it a secret to protect it from similar theft. A paean to science, the text can be laudably earnest (“I learn that no matter how big or special a meteorite is, someone always wants to take it or chip it”) but the dialogue is occasionally stilted. Brief quotes, mostly from nonfiction science resources, open each chapter, intriguing readers who might otherwise wonder where Henry’s narrative is going and why. The flood that overtakes Henry’s house traumatizes his family, especially when some people in the town blame them for it, but Henry shows impressive kindness and resilience. The main cast reads as White; a visiting scientist who mentors Henry is Black.
A meandering, idealistic tale for budding scientists. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-17573-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
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