Bailey’s life is lousy—yes, really louse-y, because she and all the other fifth graders have head lice! The Maine island–dweller's problems start when she opts to go to the mainland for school. What’s bugging her? Her birthday party is cancelled; her best friend doesn’t seem to be her best friend anymore; her pet parakeet gets loose and lost; her Mom threatens to cut her long hair, which she’s growing to donate to Care Through Hair for her Aunt Jess, who is bald from cancer—all this because of the lice. School embarrassment, the dreaded shampoo, a historic tea-party reenactment, ferry rides to school are all lathered into the plot, too. The story line has too many nit-picking contrivances: the teacher who always reacts positively, why the school nurse chooses to send her back to the classroom, Bailey’s gloomy stubbornness and the convenience of the historical society’s event. Purposeful in a lighthearted way but guaranteed to make your head—scalp and brain—itch! (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-525-42286-0
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
The authors open with a few pages of general advice on good locations for plants, pots, choices of soil, feeding and...
British-flavored step-by-step instructions, along with useful, sometimes humorous illustrations, encourage beginning gardeners to raise some rather bizarre plants.
The authors open with a few pages of general advice on good locations for plants, pots, choices of soil, feeding and watering, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings and constructing a variety of mini-greenhouses from household materials. Subsequent sections cover a variety of unusual plants: squirting cucumber, voodoo lily, Abyssinian banana, cardoon, walking stick cabbage, Venus fly trap, pitcher plant, giant echium and lychee. There are close-up color photographs of the plants, and attractive cartoon illustrations demonstrate some of the key gardening techniques. Unfortunately, the text fails to mention that the squirting cucumber is poisonous and the giant echium can cause skin reactions in those that touch it, particularly troublesome since the photo in that section shows a boy grabbing it. The cardoon is considered a “noxious weed” in California; the text merely cautions that in some places, cardoon “can spread their seeds around and grow all over the place,” and should not be allowed to go to seed in those areas. Additionally, the described propagation difficulties of some of these plants may discourage many. A plant source follows, including nurseries in Europe and North America, as well as a glossary.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84507-833-1
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Blimey, no Harry Potter competition here, just a light encounter with British humor no amount of American vocabulary can...
What happens when magic goes berserk?
In the case of Mr. Hardbattle’s old and dusty bookshop, where magic has taken up residence, its behavior is erratic, ranging from mischievous to uncontrollable. Staples play a skipping game, books read themselves and thumbtacks attack bare feet. That's tame, though, compared to inanimate objects’ coming to life, the second-to-last step’s turning to custard and, worst of all, The Smell (individually offensive to each person who comes into the shop). When Mr. Hardbattle ventures forth to find a new home for the magic, Miss Quint and schoolboy Arthur take over the shop and discover they can bring book characters to life. Bedlam ensues when a motley collection of fictional creations overruns the bookshop, and three miscreants engineer a series of burglaries. How to foil uppity Mrs. Voysey-Brown, Jimmy the bellhop and Mr. Claggitt, a mountaineer? A plot to catch them in the act works and everyone and everything returns to (almost) normal. In the thick of the twists, the magic itself becomes a character, directing and redirecting the action, which is most of the fun here. Though the novelis set in the quaint (fictional) English town of Plumford and oozes English coziness from every pore, it has, alas, been Americanized—a shame.
Blimey, no Harry Potter competition here, just a light encounter with British humor no amount of American vocabulary can disguise. (Magical adventure. 8-11)Pub Date: July 19, 2011
ISBN: 948-1-59990-629-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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