A sweet, comforting, and encouraging Viking tale about friendship and compassion.
A young Viking worries about being different in this illustrated children’s book.
Klippe, a pale-skinned, redheaded Viking who wears a helmet with two horns, doesn’t think she fits in: “Klippe feels that she cannot keep up at School. That she does not understand the jokes the other kids make. That she cannot play the games, she wants to.” But one by one, other kids reach out to Klippe to show her that she belongs. Kanin reveals to Klippe that she also faces difficulties in school; after studying together, they find the answers to the questions they didn’t understand. When Klippe feels left out in a boisterous Viking group, one of the children thanks her for being caring and supporting others. Klippe realizes that even though she acts differently than the other kids, they see her strengths and love her. When Tyr invites Klippe to spar, she hesitates because she has never tried it. But Tyr makes her feel comfortable and Klippe realizes that she is a natural; all she had to do was try. While Klippe’s struggle is internal, these big emotions are very real, and her conflict with her own thoughts and feelings comes to an empowered resolution that young readers will appreciate. In this enjoyable and uplifting tale, Fyrre’s sentence structure is sometimes stilted, but the simple vocabulary makes the book accessible. Kini’s cartoon illustrations are eye-catching, full of funny hats, swords, and shields for the Vikings as well as a goose companion for Klippe. The characters’ varied skin tones reflect both modern diversity and the many lands where historical Vikings roamed, though the setting itself is far more fantastical and reminiscent of Cressida Cowell’s Berk in the How To Train Your Dragon series. The kindness of Klippe’s community offers an entry point for young readers to discuss their own feelings of being different.
A sweet, comforting, and encouraging Viking tale about friendship and compassion.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-648-81602-7
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Boogamedia
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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