A warm and insightful exploration into the nature of grief and healing.
After the sudden death of her mama in 1921 Saskatchewan, Lucy is afraid that her memory will be erased by a new housekeeper.
Thirteen-year-old Lucy Barber is determined to fill Mama’s role. Only by learning to do her chores does Lucy feel that Mama is close. First, Aunt Faye visits and interferes with the household; then Papa hires Mrs. Jenkins, who introduces new routines, sparking Lucy’s resentment. Worse, 5-year-old Teddy is forgetting Mama and latching on to Mrs. Jenkins instead. Papa and Tom, Lucy’s older brother, don’t notice the changes—Papa is immersed in work, and Tom seems to be hiding something suspicious and is hanging out with a friend Lucy doesn’t care for. Further disrupting the family equilibrium, Papa blames Uncle Ed for the fire that caused Mama’s death. Lucy is determined to drive Mrs. Jenkins away, keep Tom out of trouble, and bring her family together, but when she goes too far, the consequences aren’t what she desired. Details about farm life, domestic routines, and Prohibition firmly establish the rural historical setting, while Lucy’s emotional struggles will resonate with a contemporary audience. Lucy is equal parts fragile and fierce as she tries to deal with her grief, and her misguided attempts to keep life from changing are both understandable and heartbreaking. Ultimately, the knowledge that she isn’t alone in her experience helps Lucy move forward. The cast presents white.
A warm and insightful exploration into the nature of grief and healing. (author interview) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780889957497
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
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