Explores the power of connection and valuing difference with sincerity.
Ruby Emmerson and her twin brother, Bryce, are entering sixth grade at a charter school for “the smartest kids in the district”—even though Ruby longs to do her own thing for a change.
Bryce, a shy robotics enthusiast, is thrilled. Ruby longs for her old friends and feels adrift at Benton Academy. She has dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, and even though the school provides accommodations in accordance with her 504 plan, she struggles with the high-pressure academics in a school of overachievers. She’s worried about her poor performance having consequences for Bryce’s being able to stay—their parents want them at the same school for convenience. In a moment of desperation, Ruby creates an anonymous social media account, confessionsofamango, to share her feelings of being an imposter. The account gains a following, and a new reality opens up in which her classmates reveal they’re struggling with challenges she’d never imagined. The space she makes for her peers changes the school culture, Ruby’s perception of herself, and her relationships. First-person narrator Ruby has a likable voice; she’s empathetic and socially adept. The debut co-authors portray her learning disabilities sensitively, making her experiences feel specific to who she is, and the sibling bond between the twins is realistically fraught, although the supporting cast has less depth. Characters largely present white.
Explores the power of connection and valuing difference with sincerity. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780316586078
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
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