In the end, the book fails to deliver a story that stands out or characters who stand apart.
A spunky young character takes a complicated path to find her place in school, but she stumbles along the way. Unfortunately, so does the author.
With her debut effort, Ross brings readers Chrysanthemum, better known as Bean. It’s the start of the school year, and Bean can’t wait to see her best friend Carla and get third grade started. But almost immediately, Bean discovers that nothing is as she’d imagined. Most significantly, Carla no longer wants to be friends. The story conveys Bean’s struggle to find her place in her family with sisters Rose and Gardenia and at school, facing down the class’s biggest bully, Tanisha. It’s obvious that Ross cares about her character and her struggles. But the book moves slowly, and at 197 pages it feels much too long for kids Bean's age. Those children comfortable with length and reading level may well not be interested in reading about a third-grader. Inconsistent language is jarring, making Bean feel like a girl anywhere from 6 to 16. Not to mention, Bean’s epiphany will leave kids with wrinkled foreheads, asking, “Huh?”
In the end, the book fails to deliver a story that stands out or characters who stand apart. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-166011-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
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