A moving story showing that even the smallest sparks of resistance can ignite change.
During World War II, a girl becomes embroiled with the French Resistance; in the present day, another girl investigates her story.
In November 1943, 13-year-old Marie Bonnet and her older sister, Héloise, are living alone in Nazi-occupied Paris. Their father was ordered to go work in Germany earlier that year, and their mother died long ago. When Marie discovers that Héloise has been working for the Resistance, she jumps at the chance to help too. She’s initially assigned small tasks, like leaving flyers on park benches, but her responsibilities soon escalate to transporting artwork to hide from the Nazis. In the contemporary timeline, Penny Marks has recently (and begrudgingly) moved with her family from Wisconsin to Paris for her art historian mother’s one-year teaching fellowship. While accompanying Mom to a work site where a mysterious painting has been found within a wall, Penny discovers and secretly takes a letter that’s hidden behind the plaster. She’s intrigued to discover that it alludes to Marie’s involvement in the Resistance, and she begins researching what happened. In alternating chapters, both white-presenting girls learn of the ripple effects that seemingly small actions can have. The parallel storylines are well-paced and engaging, although Penny’s arc incorporates multiple topics—defunding the arts, a terrorist attack, her brother’s health scare, friendship drama—that would have benefited from further development.
A moving story showing that even the smallest sparks of resistance can ignite change. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780063321786
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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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