While this may be too didactic for many readers to choose on their own, it’s a sure bet for groups and families focused on...
Kids don’t often get a chance to help others outside their families in meaningful ways. This book may change that.
Ancona’s focus is not on connecting readers with specific organizations but on showing kids the myriad ways they can make a difference, whether working with their parents, their friends, their schools, or people in their communities. A classroom’s students knit hats and scarves for the homeless; families harvest produce for soup kitchens; kids bag plums and snacks for needy families; a girl accompanies her dad when he delivers a hot meal to an elderly man; children help train dogs for service jobs; one boy helps another who is disabled to ski; children water young trees during a drought; mentors help younger students with schoolwork; a club cleans up their section of adopted roadway. Ancona gives a general idea of what each volunteer opportunity entails and how long it takes. Lots of pictures fill the spreads. The kids are named in the text, which gives the whole package a nicely personal feel—individuals are doing this work, not generic people. The children are focused and obviously trying their best, but they are also finding time for fun.
While this may be too didactic for many readers to choose on their own, it’s a sure bet for groups and families focused on doing some community service. (Nonfiction. 5-12)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7367-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that.
Beatrice Zinker is a kinder, gentler Judy Moody.
Beatrice doesn’t want to be fit in a box. Her first word was “WOW,” not “Mom.” She does her best thinking upside down and prefers to dress like a ninja. Like Judy Moody, she has patient parents and a somewhat annoying younger brother. (She also has a perfectly ordinary older sister.) Beatrice spends all summer planning a top-secret spy operation complete with secret codes and a secret language (pig Latin). But on the first day of third grade, her best friend, Lenny (short for Eleanor), shows up in a dress, with a new friend who wants to play veterinarian at recess. Beatrice, essentially a kind if somewhat quirky kid, struggles to see the upside of the situation and ends up with two friends instead of one. Line drawings on almost every spread add to the humor and make the book accessible to readers who might otherwise balk at its 160 pages. Thankfully, the rhymes in the text do not continue past the first chapter. Children will enjoy the frequent puns and Beatrice’s preference for climbing trees and hanging upside down. The story drifts dangerously close to pedantry when Beatrice asks for advice from a grandmotherly neighbor but is saved by likable characters and upside-down cake. Beatrice seems to be white; Lenny’s surname, Santos, suggests that she may be Latina; their school is a diverse one.
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6738-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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