Likely to engage the primary school set with its madcap humor and unpredictable heroine.
When a little girl living in Denver has visions about the future, she discovers her new power has big pluses and minuses in this first of a projected series.
Impetuous white third-grader Hazy Bloom aspires to be the first astronaut on Mars and experiments to see how many miniature marshmallows will fit up her nose. One day, Hazy’s arms “get prickly and goose bumpy,” she feels “kind of hot and cold,” and has a weird vision of “little, round, green peas, flying around in midair.” Next day in the school cafeteria, a food fight with flying peas breaks out, and Hazy realizes this is what she saw in her vision the day before. Her second vision (of “a big, blue, sparkly number”) allows her to save an allergic friend in a sports jersey from a bee sting the following day. As Hazy’s cryptic visions continue, her inability to correctly interpret her “tomorrow power” leads to a series of disastrous messes, leaving Hazy to sort out her new ability and resolve the trouble she’s created. Hazy’s irrepressible, hilarious narration (punctuated with exclamation points and spelling vocabulary words she likes and dislikes) proves fast-paced and amusing. Final art unavailable for review.
Likely to engage the primary school set with its madcap humor and unpredictable heroine. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-30494-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lightweight cooperation lesson wrapped in slime.
Kate and friends learn chemistry and friendship through fun, gross science.
Ten-year-old Kate is superexcited about the Fall Science Challenge. The winners will demonstrate a Vomiting Pumpkin stunt! But in her team’s haste to make the best Ghost (vapor from water and dry ice) and Moon Rocks (lemon juice on colored baking soda), they fight with another team, which leads to a minor injury. Kate and her teammates, Birdie and Phoenix, don’t get a detention but a lesson in cooperation. The two squabbling teams are assigned to pretest an escape room. As a consequence for fighting in school while using potentially dangerous substances, it’s an unusual choice, but it certainly leads to a clever, multichapter puzzle. While this escape room wouldn’t be the best choice for an actual classroom—to solve it, the students rely on outside knowledge from the YouTube videos of author avatar Dr. Caroline and use a steamer while unsupervised—it’s a whiz of an adventure when it’s safely fiction. Accurately representing escape rooms, the puzzles are not solvable by readers, who don’t have access to the physical artifacts. The excitement of brainstorming under a time limit, however, comes through. Clip-art–style illustrations are scattered throughout the short chapters, and one experiment, requiring some special equipment, is provided in detail. Kate and Phoenix are White; Birdie is South Asian.
A lightweight cooperation lesson wrapped in slime. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11658-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This effort models STEAM concepts in such an inviting way that readers will be inspired to make their own explorations.
Jesse makes mistakes estimating volume, resulting in spilled juice when she overfills her glass and, more critically, a popped bike tire when she puts in too much air. When the local toy store offers a prize of a new bike to whomever is the first to guess (within 500) the number of jelly beans in a large container, she welcomes the assistance of neighbor Professor Peach in learning how to calculate volume. He provides easy-to-understand step-by-step instructions that help Jesse measure how many jelly beans fit into a cubic inch (which they make with construction paper) and then determine the volume of a container. Jesse makes her own calculations to figure out how many jelly beans should be in the jar—leading to a smart estimate. Jesse and the other principals are white; racially diverse friends play supporting roles. Four companion titles publish simultaneously, each focusing on a different aspect of STEAM. The stories are appropriately short for emergent readers, lavishly illustrated with Bowser’s attractive, colorful illustrations, and present commonplace, recognizable situations. The other stories explain pendulums, discuss geology and archaeology, provide information on the aerodynamics of a sycamore seed, and illustrate how a lens can focus light. Backmatter in each includes a surprisingly amusing glossary and a supporting activity.
This effort models STEAM concepts in such an inviting way that readers will be inspired to make their own explorations. (Mystery. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63440-958-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Red Chair Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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