Bound to whet appetites.
A droll tween take on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
For more than five centuries, the superficially polite Ebenezer Tweezer has resided in an enormous house teeming with riches provided by an attic-dwelling beast. Their arrangement is simple: Ebenezer feeds the beast whatever it requests, and the beast vomits forth anything Ebenezer desires. What began with roast beef sandwiches soon gave way to more…unconventional fare, and the beast has vowed to withhold Ebenezer’s 512th birthday present—an annual anti-aging potion—until it’s served a human child. Following a few false starts, Ebenezer visits the contemptible Miss Fizzlewick’s orphanage and adds Bethany, a churlish girl whose parents perished in a fire, to the beast’s menu. Bethany’s surly, sarcastic antics immediately make Ebenezer’s life less than pleasurable, but the beast refuses to sup upon a scrawny child. Straightforward, third-person narration from Ebenezer’s perspective neither preaches nor condescends, and a tight focus on titular characters makes pages fly by. As Ebenezer grows decrepit and battles a will demented as his own, he finds himself growing involuntarily fond of the girl he’s fattening. Can this unlikely tandem outwit a truly inhuman monster? Meggitt-Phillips’ ability to make readers squeal with delight, squirm in discomfort, and squawk with laughter make classical comparisons inevitable. Though wildly imaginative, the book is also ethnically homogenous, as nearly all characters are coded White.
Bound to whet appetites. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-7889-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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