Representations of autistic kids’ friendships are valuable, but this is not the cat’s meow.
A cat in need of a home finds a girl in need of a friend.
Franklin, a massive Maine coon cat who’s been homeless since he was accidentally separated from his person, finds a temporary new home. Franklin is persuaded to come inside by Chester, the therapy dog for Gus, an autistic boy who has seizures—a duo readers met in McGovern’s Chester and Gus (2017). Cat allergies mean Gus’ folks can’t be Franklin’s forever family, but he’s optimistic about Amelia, Gus’ classmate. Amelia adores cats, but Gus is her only friend. She’s an anxious kid, sometimes bullied and sometimes mean herself (once, she’s quite racist about a Korean American classmate’s food). Her parents pressure her to be a mathlete, but though she’s good at arithmetic, Amelia struggles with other types of math and hates being on the team. Conveniently, Franklin can communicate with her (what initially seems like realistic interspecies communication becomes a psychic bond), and he coaches her. Because of Chester, Franklin’s learned that you need to act like a friend to have friends. Amelia’s mother explores whether Amelia might have autism, though differently expressed than in mostly nonverbal Gus, while Franklin convinces Amelia to go back to mathletes. Outsider points of view are common in novels about autistic people, but a pet narrator who says that autism’s not shameful because autistic people just behave like cats is not quite the empowering message it’s intended to be. Main human characters read as White.
Representations of autistic kids’ friendships are valuable, but this is not the cat’s meow. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-246332-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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