A summer camp story let down by fatphobia and other problematic content.
The preteen diarist goes to summer camp and makes a new, albeit spectral, friend.
Sounding just as insecure but less whiny in this second volume of his private notebook, Charlie has a mostly idyllic summer thanks to Kamp P. He shares a cabin (whose name, bizarrely, is said to mean Earth in “Native American”) with school friends and idolized cousin Joje and repeatedly runs into the deliciously terrifying but friendly ghost of a camper who drowned 50 years before. Writing in mixed font sizes, with words printed in green for emphasis, Charlie also records injuries, wasp stings, camp activities, and pointed life lessons. William, Charlie’s bullied friend (“He’s such a GOOD GUY, I don’t know why it’s so hard for him to make friends…I know why: he’s too FAT”) shows up at camp, many pounds slimmer, announcing, “I’ve changed what I eat. I was sick of being fat and ugly.” Charlie is more a reactor than a ruminator, but readers will pick up on his feelings easily enough, even when he’s unsure what he feels after the news that his antagonistic older half sister was in a coma and nearly died after being hit by a car. Nevertheless, Charlie ends on an upbeat note, rather callously, all things considered, reflecting on the “BEST SUMMER, EVER!” As before, toxic masculinity appears throughout: “Look at the bright side. We didn’t get beat by girls.” Characters read white.
A summer camp story let down by fatphobia and other problematic content. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9782925004080
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Forbidden Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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