An investigation of hard choices and empathy.
There isn’t much going on in Clear Canyon City, the small Arizona town where Avalyn and her parents moved for the climate after her severe asthma nearly killed her.
But all she needs are Dillon and Nan, her two best friends, and her passion for competitive spelling. Though she struggles with her asthma and food and environmental allergies, life is mostly normal—until, all at once, unprecedented dust storms hit and middle school bullying ramps up. These dangers are marked by the arrival of Adam, a sullen and withdrawn new student. He and Avalyn form a growing connection over a love of X-Men comics and feelings of isolation, and his presence and the increasingly severe weather seem to be connected. Avalyn must gather the courage to help protect Adam when no one else can and perhaps share her deepest secret: that she suspects she’s an empath, able to sense the emotions of others. This is a skill she’ll need to draw upon to confront the horrible truth of Adam’s family life. Despite many pop-culture references that seem to stand in for deeper characterization, Avalyn’s difficult, matter-of-fact daily negotiations with her health and the unforgiving desert surroundings are well realized. Her determined sleuthing will draw in readers, and the different abuses Avalyn and Adam each face are presented with care and not glossed over. Most main characters are cued White; Nan is Mexican American.
An investigation of hard choices and empathy. (author’s note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780316414234
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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