A heartwarming fantasy exploring grief, friendship, and fairies.
Five children find a portal to fairyland.
Ten-year-old Jojo and her sisters, 11-year-old Maisie and 5-year-old twins Amy and Bee, are spending their summer outside while their mom, an author, tries to meet her looming deadline. The girls while away their sunny days, reading, playing, and imagining. When Theo comes to stay with his uncle, who lives across the street, he joins the gang. Last year, Jojo, the group’s storyteller, had woven an intricate tale of an impending attack upon the fairies from frightening skeletal birds she dubs “bone creatures,” but she never finished the story after the death of her beloved Grandma Nan. When the quintet follow a fairy through a tiny door in a tree, they discover that Jojo’s tale has taken on a life of its own, and she must summon the resolve to give it a conclusion. Bouwman’s clever middle-grade fantasy has a delightful throwback feel, noticeably absent of technology or adult intervention as the children spend entire days outside together. As the group delves further into fairyland, Jojo struggles to reconcile her own grief but comes to realize that Maisie and Theo have their own heartaches to unpack. Jojo directly references Narnia as inspiration for her tales, but the book also has much in common with The Neverending Story. Physical descriptions of characters are minimal.
A heartwarming fantasy exploring grief, friendship, and fairies. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781665912532
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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