An empowering and heartwarming example of using kindness to face challenges and help others.
A 10-year-old girl shows care for the people she loves by being kind and writing letters.
Joy Applebloom’s ability to find the silver linings in life continues as a theme in this second series entry. After living all around the world, the Applebloom family is still adjusting to living with Granddad back in the U.K. Things aren’t going smoothly. Joy’s 13-year-old sister, Claude, sneaked out, was grounded and lost her phone privileges, and isn’t speaking to Mum and Dad. Joy’s parents are spending less time together. Granddad is lonely. And to top it all off, Joy’s new best friend, Benny, is being bullied by a former friend. At first, Joy is unsure what to do about all these problems, but then she spots a sign at school that reads: “Speak up, be kind and tell the truth. Help somebody today!” Now she’s determined to use kindness to help her friends and family. Joy’s ability to not just see the glass as half full but to be “grateful for the glass” itself demonstrates a resilient way of dealing with everyday struggles. Written in a charming and hilarious first-person voice, the story includes a sprinkling of sweet black-and-white illustrations and reproductions of Joy’s letters. The Appleblooms are cued as white, and the earlier entry, A Girl Called Joy (2024), established that Benny is British Jamaican.
An empowering and heartwarming example of using kindness to face challenges and help others. (Letter-Writing Tips From Joy) (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781684649235
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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