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FASHION KITTY AND THE B.O.Y.S.

(BALL OF YELLOW STRING)

From the Fashion Kitty series , Vol. 4

Fashion Kitty has plenty of fans and won’t go out of style anytime soon. This installment, however, requires a bit more...

Fashion Kitty has met her share of enemies, but Leon Lambaster the III is the most devious, dastardly of all.

This time, no one is attacking her fashion sense—he's trying to capture Fashion Kitty herself! Leon, a troublemaker at school, starts the Catch Fashion Kitty Club (C.F.K.C. for short). The other members are there because they want to see Fashion Kitty up close, not because they want to harm her. But not Leon. He’s sneaky and full of mischief. However, Leon’s twin brother Lester is the complete opposite. Lester is friends with Kiki Kittie (or Fashion Kitty, when duty calls). When Lester finally learns of Leon’s plan, he does everything he can to stop him. With a larger text-to-illustration ratio than previous works (Fashion Kitty, 2005, etc.), Harper has room to expand. And expand she does. The wacky ball of slimy, yellow string—integral to Fashion Kitty’s capture—needs special gloves and two separate kinds of sprays for it to work. The exciting, yet cluttered, conclusion combines a marshmallow statue, rubber bands from an Eiffel Tower T-shirt and x-ray vision. Along with a few fashion emergencies thrown in.

Fashion Kitty has plenty of fans and won’t go out of style anytime soon. This installment, however, requires a bit more attentiveness than her previous outings.   (creative ideas for crafty kitties; not seen) (Graphic novel. 8-12)

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4231-3654-5

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011

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CHARLOTTE'S WEB

The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...

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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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J VS. K

An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.

Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”

J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.

An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9780316582681

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025

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