Both an enticing mystery and a satisfying emotional journey.
A game night provides an avenue for pushing past social anxiety.
Amy would much prefer to be nose-deep in a good detective novel than socializing with her peers. Although she and her therapist work on strategies to help her calm down in panic-inducing situations and to step out of her comfort zone, things like class presentations send her spiraling. So she’s surprised when classmate Reagan invites her to a murder mystery–themed birthday party with three other schoolmates. As the game begins, Amy finds freedom in the detective work and in her assigned character, scientist Millie Morgan (“If I mess up or act weird, it can just be part of Millie’s storyline,” she reasons). As the group looks for clues, Amy speaks up and finds herself leading the investigation. Though the experience isn’t without its challenges, it’s ultimately positive and rings true, and Evans realistically conveys Amy’s anxiety symptoms. And readers will have a blast solving the mystery. Reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier’s or Remy Lai’s work, Bell’s cartoon illustrations establish the mood effectively. The costumes, palette, and setting fluctuate; when the game’s on, Amy and the other girls resemble their characters and seem to truly be exploring an old-timey manor. Panel backgrounds turn gray when Amy’s thoughts become overwhelming. The party guests are a sympathetic bunch and easily accept Amy’s sharing of her diagnosis. Amy has pale skin and black hair; the other kids vary in skin tone.
Both an enticing mystery and a satisfying emotional journey. (Graphic mystery. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780063282483
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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