by Bree Barton ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2022
A moving, hopeful tale about confronting depression.
Suffering from depression, a girl erases words from a magical dictionary, hoping in the process to also erase her sadness.
Zia, a sixth grader with a gift for making up words, lived happily with her mother until Shadoom came into her life a year ago. Shadoom is Zia’s name for the “room of shadows” now filling her with “fear and hurt and sadness.” Afraid everyone will think she’s a “hopeless weirdling,” Zia stops hanging out with her best friends, hides in the girls’ bathroom at lunch, and refuses to tell her mother, who’s stressed enough working two jobs, paying bills, and caring for Zia’s grouchy Greek immigrant grandmother who has dementia. Zia wants to fix herself, but she doesn’t know what’s wrong. Discovering her grandmother’s mysterious dictionary that comes with a charmed eraser, Zia experiments with erasing words and feels empowered as they vanish from the world. While removing words that trigger Shadoom, Zia erases fear and then pain with dire consequences and must find a way to undo her actions. Narrating in the first-person present tense, Zia’s honest voice adds immediacy and credibility to her chronicle of the frightening onset of her depression, her lonely efforts to conceal it, her totally misguided attempts to magically erase it, and the realization she doesn’t have to cope on her own. Definitions of words key to Zia’s story introduce each chapter, reinforcing the dictionary theme.
A moving, hopeful tale about confronting depression. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35099-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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by Bree Barton
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by Bree Barton
by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
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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by E.B. White illustrated by Fred Marcellino
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams
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PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
by Katherine Applegate ; illustrated by Patricia Castelao ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023
Certain to steal hearts.
In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary.
She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. Applegate deftly tempers themes of grief and loss with compassion and humor as Ruby finds her place in the herd. The author’s note touches on climate change, the illegal ivory trade, and conservation efforts, but the highly emotive framing of the story through the memories of a bewildered baby elephant emphasizes the impact of lines such as “ ‘in Africa,’ I say softly, ‘there were bad people,’ ” without offering readers a nuanced understanding of the broader context that drives poaching.
Certain to steal hearts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780063080089
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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by Katherine Applegate ; illustrated by Patricia Castelao
by Katherine Applegate ; illustrated by Patricia Castelao
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