This satisfying slice-of-life story about the permutations of friendship and family resonates.
A 10-year-old girl faces the various challenges of growing up.
For her 10th birthday, Celie Valentine Altman gets a punching bag and a journal from her father, both of which she puts to good use. Her most pressing problem is that her best friend, Lula, has stopped speaking to her. Celie has no idea why, though she knows it’s somehow connected to a fight she overheard between Lula’s parents. Losing a best friend is heartbreaking for a girl of that age, and Celie’s anger and confusion are palpable. Using a diary format and leavening her tale with humor, Sternberg gets Celie’s voice just right, and readers should find her completely credible. Though she’s kind and resourceful, Celie’s overarching trait is an anger that she has trouble controlling. She expresses her frustrations in words and pictures, and Wright’s spot-on black-and-white illustrations perfectly complement Sternberg’s text. Besides Lula’s mysterious defection, Celie must deal with her older and better-balanced sister, Jo; Jo’s new buddy, Trina, whom Celie dislikes; her embarrassing cousin Carla, who comes to babysit when Celie’s mother goes out of town; and her feelings about her suddenly addled grandmother.
This satisfying slice-of-life story about the permutations of friendship and family resonates. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59078-993-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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