An atmospheric tale told in sparkling prose of a close-knit family caught up in a changing world.
The latest from acclaimed author Laird follows a girl’s coming of age in postwar England.
After firmly placing the story in the 1950s by describing 13-year-old Charity’s serious bout with polio, the author sets the stage for further change as the Brown family is shocked to inherit a grand home from a fellow member of their strict Christian sect, the Lucasites. They move into Gospel Fields, intending to make it “a haven of peace and beauty for the weary and heavy-laden.” Along with this sudden change in circumstance, Charity navigates returning to school after her illness. She feels different because she’s not allowed to do the worldly things the other young people do. In her first-person narration, Charity, whose father is Scottish and mother comes from New Zealand, contemplates faith and community and describes her efforts to befriend neighbor Rachel Stern, who’s Jewish. The wider world and its complexities come to her through her older siblings’ arrivals and departures, her exposure to new cultural opportunities, and her parents’ welcoming of people into their home (including a German with shell shock, a young man from India who’s convalescing, and a medical student from Nigeria). This evocative, character-driven novel informed by the author’s own childhood will resonate with contemporary readers who are asking questions and seeking their own paths.
An atmospheric tale told in sparkling prose of a close-knit family caught up in a changing world. (author’s note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781529075632
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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