Sweet but heavy on lessons learned.
For a journal assignment, all the girls in the Daring Dreamers Club have chosen a Disney princess with whom they feel a connection.
In this second entry in the series, Piper has selected Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, because they both have several obstacles to overcome. She is dyslexic, has difficulties reading and writing, and now has trouble solving math word problems. Her greatest joy is experimenting with food using the scientific method to concoct her recipes. She has been selected to participate in a reality TV show that challenges child chefs and offers a large monetary prize to the winner. She learns that obstacles need not be faced alone and that she has the support of her family and her friends in the club. Piper’s tale is interspersed with her journal entries and those of the other club members, sharing their thoughts about their own challenges. Piper is Jewish, conveyed in a reference to Passover, Mariana is Latina, Zahra is Muslim, and Ruby is white, a child of divorce. Milla is African-American and the heroine of the previous series entry. Although the girls have distinct and interesting personalities, the ethnic and racial diversity feels skin-deep; interestingly, not one girl chooses to focus on a princess that shares her race or ethnicity. Soderberg employs a compassionate, light, and humorous tone, allowing readers to root wholeheartedly for Piper, but the princess connection tries too hard.
Sweet but heavy on lessons learned. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7364-3944-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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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