A refreshingly original high-interest, low-grit video game story.
A beloved video game leads to new friends for a girl who’s just switched schools.
When Chell (with “a hard sound, as in ‘chair,’” thank you very much) Park gets called to Principal Gupta’s office, she can’t help but take the opportunity to play a round of Soapbox Derby while she waits. Three nearby kids take an interest in what she’s doing: injured athlete Mario Delgado, who’s cued Latine, Josh Bard, a “vampire pale” boy with hearing aids, and Alyx Achebe, whose Black-presenting family founded a successful baked-goods franchise. The four connect online and decide to start their school’s first esports team. Chell forges ahead, though she knows her mom would never agree; she was named after a character from her unemployed father’s favorite video game, and his gaming (which got him fired and which he often prioritizes over his daughter) is a source of conflict between her separated parents. Chell’s deception is bound to catch up to her, but the four seventh graders secure a faculty sponsor and try out for an exciting tournament, all the while growing closer and opening up to one another. Exciting gaming scenes accompany gentle, emotional explorations of telling the truth even in the face of undesirable consequences. Chell is implied biracial, with a Korean American dad and a mom who reads white.
A refreshingly original high-interest, low-grit video game story. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781645952688
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pixel+Ink
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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
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
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