Comical and whimsical, with a lovable and precocious narrator.
A well-traveled, formerly home-schooled girl faces challenges in attending school for the first time.
Finding the silver lining in every situation has been the hallmark of Joy Applebloom’s personality. In Valentine’s series opener, Joy is moving “home” to the U.K., somewhere she’s never been, along with her 13-year-old sister, Claude, and her mum and dad. They’re leaving Zanzibar to go live with their injured granddad, a big change after being in places like Mumbai, Hanoi, and Mexico City. Granddad is settled in his ways, but slowly Joy figures out ways to spend time with him and even make him laugh. When she enters formal schooling for the very first time as a 10-year-old, despite being “genuinely, properly all geared up for it,” she struggles to cope in this “silver-lining-free zone,” with its unfamiliar routines and social codes. But Joy, who’s cued white, finally meets a British Jamaican boy named Benny; they bond over the beauty of the old oak tree growing in the playground, which gives her hope again. But when the oak is threatened by plans to build a new school, Joy and Benny are galvanized into action. Told from Joy’s first-person point of view, the storytelling is clever and funny while dealing with age-appropriate challenges. Lefevre’s clean and imaginative black-and-white illustrations are scattered throughout this relatable and charming story.
Comical and whimsical, with a lovable and precocious narrator. (All About Joy) (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781684649228
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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