A solid next installment to this detective series centered on friendship.
The start of school ushers in new friends and a new case in this follow-up to Shirley & Jamila Save Their Summer (2020).
Ten-year-old Jamila Waheed is attending a new school, but luckily her best friend, Shirley Bones, is right by her side. After being inseparable over the summer, school-year busyness brings in a change of routine: homework, lessons, practices, and more. Jamila might have even made herself a second friend, Seena, through her community basketball team. Meanwhile, Shirley’s still on the detective beat. The latest case has the pair pitted against a formidable opponent: notorious sixth grader Chuck Milton. The school bully trades in secrets and wields them against fellow students he extorts, including their client. Can he be stopped? Is breaking and entering ever OK? How about faking a friendship? Goerz’s detailed and expressive art pairs with dynamic dialogue to create a strong cast of characters and plotting. Emotional tension from new and developing friendships and suspense stemming from the case keep the pacing taut. Readers will especially empathize with Jamila as she worries and works to balance friendships with very different people. The neighborhood school setting is diverse: Shirley is White, Jamila is Pakistani Canadian, and Seena is Afghan and Pakistani Canadian.
A solid next installment to this detective series centered on friendship. (Graphic mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-55288-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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