This solid mix of s’mores and girl empowerment is encouraging but never saccharine.
Summer campers vow to make each other popular in their respective social circles.
Bea, a white girl, and Maisy, a mixed-race girl with white and Filipinx heritage, had been best friends until Maisy joined a popular clique reminiscent of the one in Mean Girls. Now a year has passed without a word between the two rising middle schoolers until they meet on the bus taking them to Camp Amelia for the next six weeks. Here the tables are turned, as veteran camper Bea has become tight with fellow bunkmates over the years, and Maisy finds herself on the outside for once when she’s placed in the Sunflower Bunk along with Bea and her friends. In this series opener, told in Maisy’s and Bea’s alternating perspectives, Moskowitz-Palma introduces a cast of mostly white campers with varied abilities and interests (e.g., having dyslexia, modeling professionally, and playing soccer) before ratcheting the tension. The Sunflowers are determined to win the camp’s top athletic prize; ever anxious Maisy, on the other hand, is nervous about everything related to the competition. All seems doomed until Bea and Maisy make a pact: Bea will get the Sunflowers to befriend Maisy, and Maisy will get her school pack to include Bea. In the process, Bea also confronts her parents’ divorce, and readers (and Bea) discover the reasons why Maisy’s really at camp and her seemingly perfect mother went away.
This solid mix of s’mores and girl empowerment is encouraging but never saccharine. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6745-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
