A fun and thought-provoking series entry.
The kids of the Cardboard Kingdom are back—and they have new rivals.
It’s winter break, and the suburban neighborhood kids are ready to play! Continuing their massive, complex pretend world, they’re building their confidence, working out interpersonal dramas, and having a blast. While the first few chapters work as stand-alone stories, the rest quickly build up to a bigger plot: Kids from the Parkside neighborhood have seen how much fun the Cardboard Kingdom is, and they want in. Unfortunately, this situation quickly spirals into competition and conflict as new alliances form and others are tested. Only through communication and collaboration can the different sides create peace. Themes of familial expectations, respecting differences, and teamwork are throughlines: “What if we could show everybody…that we’re even more powerful together?” While seeing new characters and dynamics is refreshing, these elements may cause difficulty in tracking the large ensemble cast, most of whom have two identities. Still, Sell’s art moves seamlessly between the imagined world of the kids’ alter egos and their real-life pretend play, giving each time to shine. As before, the multiple contributors’ chapters are seamlessly woven together with Sell’s art and overarching vision, mirroring the experiences of the characters. Neurodivergence, queerness, racial and ethnic identities, and socioeconomic status are often implied rather than stated directly. This volume will be best appreciated by those familiar with the earlier books.
A fun and thought-provoking series entry. (maps, note to readers, author bios, deleted scene, character designs, photos) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780593481622
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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
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