An uneven but ultimately heartwarming tale of a girl learning to find her place in the world.
In Nieber’s middle-grade novel, an adopted girl reluctantly visiting her birthplace in China learns to open up her heart to new experiences.
Twelve-year-old Lizzy, who was adopted as a baby, lives with her “heart mom” in Madison, Wisconsin. She and her mother prepare to travel to Lizzy’s home country of China on a post-adoption “bonding experience” trip to connect with her heritage and with other adoptees. The guide group they’re traveling with requires Lizzy to write a letter to her biological mother. They head to Beijing, with Lizzy still struggling to find kind words for the woman who abandoned her simply because Lizzy was a girl. But when she tours the rice paddies where many baby girls have been left to die solely due to their gender, Lizzy suddenly realizes how lucky she really is: “At my birth I was abandoned at the train station where I was sure to be found. Someone cared enough to call the police and they brought me to the Chenzhou orphanage. I wasn’t left to drown by my bio mother. I swear the first thing I’m going to do when we get to the hotel is rewrite my letter, thanking her for my life.” Lizzy tries to deliver her new letter to her old orphanage but discovers that it’s been torn down. With a newfound sense of belonging, Lizzy leaves her letter amid the rubble anyway and reflects on the friends that can be made with a truly open heart. Lizzy’s situation may be specific, but her feeling of never being able to fit in is universal enough to appeal to a wide middle-grade audience. Despite a few typos and occasional passages of stilted dialogue, the brisk plot manages to convey much sensitivity and compassion for Lizzy on her complicated emotional (and physical) journey. When Lizzy finally finds her voice, readers should be inspired to be themselves and to remember that it’s possible to make friends wherever they go.
An uneven but ultimately heartwarming tale of a girl learning to find her place in the world.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781639844272
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Pen It! Publications, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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