Millie’s reactions to the events of an emotionally trying time are affecting and realistic.
A novel in verse tells the story of Millie’s 11th year.
Millie, a Canadian white girl whose twin brother, Billy, died at birth, is unhappy when her parents separate. She speaks to Billy, and he responds in her imagination. Some readers may find this unusual, but it’s a comfort to Millie, and she needs some. She finds little sympathy from her older sister, and her parents seem preoccupied. Millie’s mother’s new romance is introduced in intermittent text-message transcripts. The two sisters visit their father every other weekend and find the situation difficult. Most of the girl’s quotidian experiences are described plainly: school, friends, fights with sister and mother, and her father’s brush with cancer. Her voice in Lawrence’s verse is evocative if also idiosyncratic, as when she remarks on how her mother “tries to buttermilk” the sisters. It is the desire for a dog that becomes all-important after Millie and a friend bring a found stray to a shelter. Her father can’t keep one, and her mother doesn’t want one. A friendship with a Cree woman who adopts the stray dog opens the door to Millie’s hopes, and when her parents agree to go camping together (albeit in separate tents), they soar; her imagined Billy observes: “Three tents, two canoes, one pup / sounds like a family.”
Millie’s reactions to the events of an emotionally trying time are affecting and realistic. (Verse/fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55050-681-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Coteau Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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