Chronicling the importance of empathy and openness, this fourth in the Carver Chronicles is a pleasing addition to a series...
Young Calvin Vickers must come to terms with an all-too-familiar new neighbor, the biggest bully at Carver Elementary.
Could Harper Hall just be a good kid with a troubled past? Calvin doesn’t want to be anywhere close to find out. “Big for his age” Harper Hall is someone “you don’t cross,” someone “you don’t say no [to] if he asks for one of your three Oreos,” someone who looks like “he just might pound someone into the ground.” How can Calvin focus on the school science fair when his world has just been rendered a shambles? What seems to be an impossible relationship is given hope when Calvin is offered an entry into Harper’s inner life; he learns that Harper’s mother struggles with housing insecurity and finding steady income, forcing Harper into foster care. The irony is that the cigarette-smoking, coldhearted foster grandmother who cares for Harper is not as well-equipped for the job as his troubled but loving mother. The reductive, negative-trope–supporting foster mother makes for a slight disappointment in an early chapter book that otherwise handles complexity with warmth. Harper, Calvin, and Calvin’s pals are depicted as black in Freeman’s soft, black-and-white illustrations, and Carver is a welcoming, multicultural place.
Chronicling the importance of empathy and openness, this fourth in the Carver Chronicles is a pleasing addition to a series in which diverse readers can recognize themselves in starring roles. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-80127-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Another winner from Mills, equally well suited to reading aloud and independent reading.
When Franklin School principal Mr. Boone announces a pet-show fundraiser, white third-grader Cody—whose lack of skill and interest in academics is matched by keen enthusiasm for and knowledge of animals—discovers his time to shine.
As with other books in this series, the children and adults are believable and well-rounded. Even the dialogue is natural—no small feat for a text easily accessible to intermediate readers. Character growth occurs, organically and believably. Students occasionally, humorously, show annoyance with teachers: “He made mad squinty eyes at Mrs. Molina, which fortunately she didn’t see.” Readers will be kept entertained by Cody’s various problems and the eventual solutions. His problems include needing to raise $10 to enter one of his nine pets in the show (he really wants to enter all of them), his troublesome dog Angus—“a dog who ate homework—actually, who ate everything and then threw up afterward”—struggles with homework, and grappling with his best friend’s apparently uncaring behavior toward a squirrel. Serious values and issues are explored with a light touch. The cheery pencil illustrations show the school’s racially diverse population as well as the memorable image of Mr. Boone wearing an elephant costume. A minor oddity: why does a child so immersed in animal facts call his male chicken a rooster but his female chickens chickens?
Another winner from Mills, equally well suited to reading aloud and independent reading. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-30223-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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A funny and timely primer for budding activists.
Problems are afoot at Emily Dickinson Elementary School, and it’s up to Bea Garcia to gather the troops and fight.
Bea Garcia and her best friend, Judith Einstein, sit every day under the 250-year-old oak tree in their schoolyard and imagine a face in its trunk. They name it “Emily” after their favorite American poet. Bea loves to draw both real and imagined pictures of their favorite place—the squirrels in the tree, the branches that reach for the sky, the view from the canopy even though she’s never climbed that high. Until the day a problem boy does climb that high, pelting the kids with acorns and then getting stuck. Bert causes such a scene that the school board declares Emily a nuisance and decides to chop it down. Bea and Einstein rally their friends with environmental facts, poetry, and artwork to try to convince the adults in their lives to change their minds. Bea must enlist Bert if she wants her plan to succeed. Can she use her imagination and Bert’s love of monsters to get him in line? In Bea’s fourth outing, Zemke gently encourages her protagonist to grow from an artist into an activist. Her energy and passion spill from both her narration and her frequent cartoons, which humorously extend the text. Spanish-speaking Bea’s Latinx, Einstein and Bert present white, and their classmates are diverse.
A funny and timely primer for budding activists. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 6-9)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2941-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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