“The clubs epidemic breaks out in March like a giant nit plague. It spreads through our class ’til practically everyone’s infected.” So reports young journal-writer Lorenza (“but you’d better call me Lolly, or there’ll be big trouble”) Leopold, as she launches into chatty descriptions of the Barbie Club, the Kitten Club, the Lego Club and the Harry Potter Club. Why is she telling this story? Because her tattooed and adored teacher Ms. Love has promised to play the trumpet on Grandparents Day as a reward. Backed by garish, splashy watercolor portraits and spread-filling flights of fancy, Lolly’s lengthy but legibly hand-lettered commentary on her cliquish classmates will find a ready audience in fans of Marissa Moss’s Amelia productions. A companion, Billy (ISBN: 978-1-74114-892-3), is also out. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-74114-891-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
Nelson’s powerful portraits add a majestic element to Levine’s history-based tale of Henry “Box” Brown, a slave who escaped by having himself mailed to freedom in a crate. Depicted as a solemn boy with an arresting gaze on the cover, Henry displays riveting presence in every successive scene, as he grows from child to adult, marries and is impelled to make his escape after seeing his beloved wife and children sold to slaveowners. Related in measured, sonorous prose that makes a perfect match for the art, this is a story of pride and ingenuity that will leave readers profoundly moved, especially those who may have been tantalized by the entry on Brown in Virginia Hamilton’s Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom (1993). (afterword, reading list) (Picture book. 8-10)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-439-77733-X
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Continuing the exchange of notes and postcards begun in Dear Max (2006), renowned children’s author D.J. Lucas and her greatest fan, young Max, provide mutual support in the course of another busy year. For her, it’s one of writing and promotional traveling and for him, one of struggling with a trollish babysitter and a firming relationship between his widowed mother and a new friend. It’s an exciting time for Lucas, whose My Teacher’s a Nutcase is being made into a film (starring “Tom Trews” and “Jennifer Aniseed”) even as she’s trying her hand at creating a higher-toned novel. Meanwhile, Max deals with his unhappiness partly by concealing it from his mother, and partly by composing a play in which his sitter is an ogre and Mom’s bearded, deceptively friendly caller is dubbed Fungus Face. Including playwriting tips and brief passages of dialogue along with savvy advice and loyal expressions of encouragement, the epistolary back-and-forth, liberally strewn with Max’s line drawings, creates two equally engaging storylines—and may get the creative juices flowing in some young readers, too. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: March 27, 2007
ISBN: 1-4169-0393-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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