Gemma and Alice have been best friends from the day they were born. For real: Their mothers gave birth to them on the same day and they’ve been BFFs ever since—until the day that Alice’s family moves to Scotland. Total opposites, Alice is feminine and well-behaved while Gemma has a propensity for causing calamities, which stages the action. A taxi-driving dad, two older brothers, a dog named Barking Mad, her mom who wants a curly-girly (like Alice), a fun-loving granddad and a fat classmate who loves to eat (named Biscuits) round out the cast. While stories about best friends separated by moving are plentiful, Wilson’s British fillip makes this one original, with Gemma’s strong first-person voice and personality and Sharratt’s black-and-white drawings in strip-style sketches before each chapter teasing the reader and forecasting the next turn of events. Gemma’s dilemmas—crying jags, chocolate binges, cake-throwing, special dolls and bracelets and birthday wishes—are sprinkled with British idioms; this will cause no problems for American readers, who will be grinning all the while. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59643-278-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
Budding billionaire Greg Kenton has a knack for making money and a serious rival. When he issues his first Chunky Comic Book at the beginning of sixth grade, his neighbor and classmate Maura Shaw produces an alternative. Their quarrel draws the attention of the principal, who bans comics from the school. But when they notice all the other commercial messages in their school, they take their cause to the local school committee. Without belaboring his point, Clements takes on product placement in schools and the need for wealth. “Most people can only use one bathroom at a time,” says Greg’s math teacher, Mr. Z. Greg gets the message; middle-grade readers may ignore it in favor of the delightful spectacle of Greg’s ultimate economic success, a pleasing result for the effort this up-and-coming young businessman puts into his work. Clements weaves intriguing information about comic book illustration into this entertaining, smoothly written story. Selznick’s accompanying black-and-white drawings have the appearance of sketches Greg might have made himself. This hits the jackpot. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86683-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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