A tender and charming tale about finding your courage in times of social change.
In Cryan-Hicks’ middle-grade historical novel, a young girl longs to become a reporter as she deals with the death of her mother.
It’s 1911 in West Village, and 8th-grader Gretta Anderson is eager for more than just household work. Before her mother died of tuberculosis, she planned for Gretta to go to high school and then Teacher’s School, but Gretta’s father wants her to work in the mill. “That’s the easiest thing to do. Just work in the mill like your mother did until you get married,” he says. Gretta, who isn’t sure she actually wants to be a teacher, wonders if her father may be right. But then Mr. Daniel, the editor of The Daily Sun, comes to visit Gretta’s class, and Gretta realizes what she actually desires: to become a newspaper reporter, just like the famous Nellie Bly. Gretta’s aunt informs her that almost 3,000 women are marching for the right to vote. This fuels Gretta’s resolve, but she struggles with how to tell her father about her new dream until a train carrying the popular “Two Bills Show” exotic animal show derails outside the West Village, spilling animals out into the street, and Gretta must summon a courage she’s never known to help restore order. The narrative offers an engaging exploration of women’s rights in the early 1900s as the author explores societal norms of the time. (“My mother said there are only three things girls can be besides a mother: a nurse, a secretary or a teacher.”) The well-paced plot makes for a captivating and sometimes heartbreaking read as Gretta struggles with the loss of her mother and her relationship with her grieving father. The protagonist is relatable and easy to root for—though she’s young, readers of all ages can find something important to take away from her story.
A tender and charming tale about finding your courage in times of social change.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2025
ISBN: 9798998798009
Page Count: 108
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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