Original and encouraging, but inconsistently executed.
Bee who you’re meant to bee.
Derrick Chan, a Chinese American basketball player, is stuck spending the summer after seventh grade with his paternal grandmother in Heritage, Georgia (“the most boring place on earth”), after financial problems prevent him from attending basketball camp while his widowed father is out of town working. There Derrick befriends goth roller skater Ro and photographer Giles. He also discovers a talent for fashion and later becomes a stand-in for an absent contestant at Tybee County’s Queen Bee Junior Pageant, thanks to Grandma Claudia’s connections to the event and his ability to quickly pick up the dance routines. Derrick’s time with Grandma Claudia opens new doors that allow him to explore his sexuality, discovering unexpected feelings for his best friend and fellow b-ball player, JJ. The book tackles a lot of issues from sexuality to race (Giles is cued Black; Derrick feels isolated in his largely white environment), and while the messaging is positive, the uneven pacing undermines the connections readers should make with Derrick. In its slow moments, the plot meanders around a mysterious rift between Grandma Claudia and Derrick’s father while speeding through both Derrick’s budding friendship with Ro and Giles and his coming out. This debut by Chu, a founder of Drag Story Hour who performs as Panda Dulce, will satisfy readers looking for a light, feel-good story. Readers seeking substance may be frustrated by the two-dimensional characters and saccharine resolutions.
Original and encouraging, but inconsistently executed. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063326958
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.
Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”
J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780316582681
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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