A fresh, witty, and friendship-focused series starter.
The ups and downs of a newly formed group of friends as they weather their first days of middle school.
Jojo, a biracial Guatemalan American 11-year-old, is adjusting to some big changes; she’s about to start sixth grade, and she, her brother, Sam, and their mother have recently moved in with Mom’s embarrassing boyfriend, Paul, an influencer known for his social media posts about his cats. After Jojo accidentally flashes her cat-themed underwear to her classmates (unbeknownst to Jojo, one of Paul’s felines ripped a hole in her leggings), she avoids the cafeteria and instead eats lunch from a vending machine in an abandoned locker room. She stumbles upon three other girls who are also feeling isolated and disconnected; each shares her own awkward and mortifying first-day story. The following afternoon, reports of a bobcat on the premises prompt the school to initiate a lockdown. The girls shelter in place, but because of the faulty announcement system in the locker room, they don’t initially realize the building has been evacuated. When they finally discover what’s happening, they bond further, dubbing themselves “Team Awkward” and venturing through their empty, potentially bobcat-filled school together. Filled with fun callbacks, the humorous dialogue rings true, and the lively, fast-paced though implausible plot will keep readers hooked. Additional characters—including family members, classmates, and teachers—are introduced intriguingly, suggesting they will get more time to shine in future installments. Jojo’s school is diverse.
A fresh, witty, and friendship-focused series starter. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781665950732
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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