An animated, if uneven, group of inspiring tales.
Several children work together and separately to make their small community a better place in this debut middle-grade novel.
Flint Hill Elementary School may seem run-of-the-mill on the outside, but inside, its fifth-grade students are making serious strides. When Jefferson is invited to dream up and paint a mural on the side of the school, he must look within himself and cut out the “white noise” around him to create the best image. At home, Alec finds that you can only let your parents clean up your room so much, and he learns to take more personal responsibility, with some chuckleworthy results. Samantha wants to try out for Little Shop of Horrors, the school’s yearly musical, but a bully and her own fear of falling off the stage (again) stop her from doing so; however, she gracefully steps into the role in a time of need and channels her fears positively. Talmage, fresh off his search for a mystical fish for his father, learns that perseverance can be its own reward. Genevieve must protect some school projects involving eggs but ultimately learns that it’s hard for one person to do it all. Together, the various friends at Flint Hill have qualities that will help anyone, young or old, “crack the code to an epic life,” as the book puts it. Johnson is a purposeful storyteller, and each of his seven tales embodies a different, important characteristic that a successful person should have. The individual stories, though, vary in quality. Some, like the tales of Talmage’s quest against the “Monster” fish and Alec’s quickly dirtying room, effectively get their messages across. Others, like the story of Genevieve and her eggs, may take a little more explanation, especially for younger readers. But even though they’re not all home runs, any of the seven stories is sure to spawn discussion between adults and children about how can they achieve perseverance, caring, and belief in themselves.
An animated, if uneven, group of inspiring tales.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Candy Wrapper
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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