A fun mystery with a strong sense of place and plenty of surprises.
In this series opener based on a popular podcast, 12-year-old Opal Watson loves solving mysteries—she writes down her observations and collects clues in her detective notebook.
Opal, who’s Black, has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa; she occasionally uses the cane she’s named “Pinkerton” to help her navigate in poor light conditions. On her way home to Chicago from New Orleans, where she stayed with her beloved grandmother and attended summer camp, Opal learns from her friend Madison Ling about mysterious noises coming from their apartment building, the Crescent, where Opal’s dad is the manager. Opal works with Madison and Frank Goode, her cousin and best friend, to get to the bottom of the mystery—which quickly grows bigger than any of them could have expected and even threatens the existence of the Crescent. At the same time, Opal wrestles with being partnered for a big project on the Great Migration with Ivy Atkinson, a new girl at school, after the two get off on the wrong foot at the seventh grade orientation event. The story moves at a steady pace, incorporating historical information into the many twists and turns as Opal races against the clock in a search for the truth. The book beautifully highlights the charms of the Chicago backdrop through the descriptions provided by Opal and other characters.
A fun mystery with a strong sense of place and plenty of surprises. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063326491
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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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