A sweet story about friendship between an unlikely pair and the intrigue of an ancient strategy game.
A New York City boy whose stress over winning chess matches takes him out of the zone intentionally throws an important match—but losing a chess camp scholarship as a result changes his world.
Milo and his mom end up spending the summer in Princeton, New Jersey, with a girl named Roxie, her philosophy professor mother, Nava, and their cats. The two women met through an online group for single moms; both used sperm donors to conceive. Milo, 12, and Roxie, 10, attend a day camp that’s filled with younger children, but fortunately, the two are designated counselors-in-training. After the kids meet some grad students who are playing Go, they become intrigued by the complex Asian strategy game. Obsessed, they visit a university library to do research (“free-range” Roxie shows Milo how to sneak in at night after hours) and persuade the counselors to let them teach simplified Go to the campers. Milo, who’s longing for his grandma and best friend Henry, and Roxie, who’s very intelligent but struggles with social cues, grow closer, devote themselves to Go, and figure out various personal issues. Milo’s humorous first-person narration focuses on the philosophical intricacies of Go and his growing relationship with Roxie. Comical interludes show texts between Milo and his grandmother and Henry. Milo and his mom present as Ashkenazi Jews; Roxie and Nava are Persian Jews.
A sweet story about friendship between an unlikely pair and the intrigue of an ancient strategy game. (author’s note, information about Go, resources) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781728272504
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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