Despite unevenness, strong humor (from puns to Loki’s shenanigans) and hints at deeper frost giant machinations keep the...
Loki cuts Sif’s hair in this spin on the Norse myth set at Asgard Academy, first introduced in Freya and the Magic Jewel (2018).
Sif’s reluctant to share her gift for prophecy due to her struggles in reading runes and past mishaps (including a second-grade incident that cost her a best friend). She also has an interest in Thor (which Freya interprets as a crush—Sif isn’t so sure of that). Her fellow Thunder Girls suspect that Loki likes Sif and is messing with her to draw her attention away from Thor. Then Loki goes too far—cutting Sif’s hair, which is tied to her magic that enables the harvest on Midgard. This is terrible timing, as frost giants have been sneaking to Midgard to steal wheat, and signs point to a planned attack on Asgard. Now not only must Loki fix his misstep in order to avoid a food shortage, but Sif tasks him with bringing back five additional gifts for Asgard’s defense. Sif and Freya follow him to keep an eye on the troublemaker as he bargains with dwarf blacksmiths to restore Sif’s hair. Readers may be disappointed that Sif spends so much time as an observer—although there’s no question watching Loki is entertaining—and in the big reveal involving the second-grade incident and its solution, which feels anticlimactic after the buildup. The book assumes a white default.
Despite unevenness, strong humor (from puns to Loki’s shenanigans) and hints at deeper frost giant machinations keep the series moving. (further reading, glossary) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-9643-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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