This book will roll off the shelves.
“It’s camp and roller derby! Where can you go wrong?”
The third installment of the Derby Daredevils shifts to Tomoko’s perspective as summer break approaches. Rather than hitting the trails and camping with her uncle as usual, Tomoko is going with her entire league to a sleep-away roller derby camp. Tomoko is not as excited as her friends because meeting new people is terrifying for her. Upon arrival, Tomoko is shocked to learn they are staying at a large convention center in the middle of Dallas, and she sees her worst fear realized when a girl starts bullying her. Worst of all, her friends don’t notice. When the Daredevils decide to sneak out into the city for a little while, they become lost. It’s up to Tomoko to use all her wilderness skills to navigate them back before anyone notices. The journey back is fraught with tension and revelations, and Tomoko learns that taking the lead also means standing up for yourself. This highly illustrated chapter book is lighthearted and fun yet willing to take on hard topics. Tomoko’s experiences with microaggressions—for her larger size and Japanese heritage—are not usually discussed with so much honesty and humor for middle graders. Rosewater excels at using the different perspectives of her diverse cast of characters to help Tomoko define what is happening to her and to ultimately confront her bully.
This book will roll off the shelves. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5172-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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