Raising more questions than it answers, this recommended read should spark lively discussion; a good bet for an...
Missing her best friend, Nina, who’s moved to New York, Cove, 12, faces the mean-girl bullies of her Martha’s Vineyard middle school alone.
Nina’s dads invite them to visit, but Cove’s mom insists they’ll never leave the island. Focused on her own spiritual path and with a new boyfriend in tow, she gives Cove’s daily struggles little attention. Tormented by girls who bark when they see her, Cove misses Nina most at school. With bullying out of control, the school assigns community service to instill compassion in students and improve the school’s image. Jonah at the used-clothing store introduces Cove to a TV reality show on which would-be fashion designers ages 12 through 17 design and sew in competition. Smitten (home’s TV-free), Cove, a talented artist, fantasizes about competing on the show in New York and seeing Nina. A nursing-home resident who once sewed for Coco Chanel agrees to teach Cove, but progress is frustratingly slow. Hanging with Jonah and dumpster-diving with new student Jack make life bearable, but only just, so Cove hatches a desperate plan. Slow to take shape, the plot’s end-loaded. While readers have to work for it, this thought-provoking tale of childhood isolation and powerlessness experienced in a socially networked world rewards the effort. Cove and her mom present white; race is not noted in the text, leaving the illustrations (not seen) to fill in those blanks.
Raising more questions than it answers, this recommended read should spark lively discussion; a good bet for an intergenerational book club. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-274859-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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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