Terror that’s on the gentler, more positive side.
In this second entry in a spin-off of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, a boy who transformed into a bug is (mostly) restored to his old self, a severed pinky finishes medical school, and other unusual kids do surprisingly well.
With line-drawn cartoons and casual silliness to crank up the comedy, Kinney again offers a set of tales more likely to cause snickers than screams, despite the array of conventional horror tropes. In the first episode, for instance, Ruben enters a device in his dad’s science lab and, after being turned into a ladybug with a human head, is rescued from spiders by a kindly cockroach who suffers a gruesome fate when his father returns. Elsewhere readers meet the Grim Reaper as a baby who “cried every time he got his skull shampooed,” a zombie named Sylvia who pursues a successful acting career by playing against type, and a lad with a second mouth on his belly who discovers in a middle school locker room that he’s not the only one sporting extra body parts. Except for the ghost who gets sucked into a vacuum cleaner and a football fan who, due to a heavenly administrative error, has to watch his team be terrible for millions of years, the stories tend toward upbeat endings. The characters are all silhouettes or the white of the paper, but names cue some diversity in the human cast.
Terror that’s on the gentler, more positive side. (Short stories. 8-12)Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9781419788109
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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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