Meena’s escapades will rescue readers from boredom.
The further growing ups and downs of the one and only Meena Zee, first introduced in Meena Meets Her Match (2019).
When Meena, who continues seeing treasure in other people’s trash, finds a beautiful and mysterious ring in the school parking lot, she plans to save it for when Inspiration strikes. Moments later, she saves a schoolmate from certain doom. Meena is a hero! Just as the spider did for Peter Parker, the Ring must have activated her superpowers, right? Now, Meena sees proof everywhere that she’s a superhero (she makes it to the top of the good-behavior chart for the first time, and she turns her mother’s boring gray accounting spreadsheet into a rainbow), but the one person who matters most isn’t convinced. As Meena tests her powers, her friendship with best friend Sofía is also put to the test. The Ring can’t save Meena from epilepsy, a condition that plays an important role in the plot but doesn’t define it. She manages it, with her family’s help, in moments of gentle humor. If Harriet M. Welsch had a literary little sister, it would be offbeat Meena. Readers not quite ready for Harriet the Spy will discover along with Meena that, perhaps, the power of true friendship is all that matters. Cover art shows Meena as white, and there are indications that Spanish-speaking Sofía is Mexican American. Assume whiteness elsewhere.
Meena’s escapades will rescue readers from boredom. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2820-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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