Chilling but shallow.
Literally haunted by her actions, a bully must make amends—or else.
Samantha fails a spelling test, so her parents punish her by refusing to let her go on a day trip to Rocky River Adventure Park with her friends. Rather than study harder, Samantha takes it out on classmate Rachel—her ex–best friend, whom she relentlessly bullies due to a past betrayal. A choice encounter outside of school gives Samantha an opportunity to rid herself of Rachel once and for all. She pushes her into Lake Lamont. Rachel doesn’t resurface. Guilt wracks Samantha at school the next day until she sees Rachel alive and well. But how did Rachel get out of the lake when Samantha watched her die? And how can Samantha make Rachel stop haunting her in revenge? Suspense nearly drips from this spooky page-turner, as wet handprints, hallucinations, and relentless phone calls lead Samantha back to the scene of her crime. Particularly tense scenes dip into verse territory, heightening the drama. Unfortunately, the line breaks in these portions feel more contrived than poetic. While Samantha’s first-person narration is soaked through with self-pity, her backstory unspools to round out the human behind the bully. Supporting characters come up flat and presume a white default. For all its writing flaws, however, genre fiction seekers will nonetheless devour this thrilling redemption arc.
Chilling but shallow. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-54052-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
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