Struggles to reach the summit.
A young girl dreams of climbing mountains but must defy expectations to do so.
Having grown up in Yosemite, 11-year-old Floy now feels stifled by the classroom walls and gray skies of San Francisco, where her family was forced to move some months earlier. But all that changes when family decisions lead her back to Yosemite. Once she arrives, Floy feels more alive than ever, determined to summit Half Dome. But society’s expectations for a “young lady” in 1876 threaten that goal. Floy must either convince her father to take her along on one of his expeditions or scale it alone. Based on the life of Florence Hutchings, the first European American born in Yosemite, the story offers encouragement on its surface for children to follow their dreams. However, the premise itself—a white girl bucking conventions—limits its readership. While Floy lives fully, setting lofty goals beyond her station, Native character Sally Ann exists to serve; unlike Floy’s, her life is defined by the time “before,” and her dreams are likewise tied to tradition. Other moments prove problematic as well. Although describing Yosemite as a “sublime land” and Floy as a “pilgrim” might reflect white sentiments of the time, without clear counterbalances it reinforces the mythic principle of Manifest Destiny. And when Floy realizes that a changing world means “there will no longer be a place” for Sally Ann and her family, unacknowledged white privilege allows her to dismiss the uncomfortable feelings she experiences and avoid confronting truth.
Struggles to reach the summit. (hiking tips, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-930238-99-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Yosemite Conservancy
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
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