Excels at being educational without sacrificing charm, humor, or excitement.
When the schools are gender-segregated after fifth grade, which one is a nonbinary kid supposed to choose?
Jamie Rambeau’s a pretty happy kid, growing up in Nottingham, England. It’s not until it comes time to enroll in middle school that they realize they’ll have to pick either the boys’ school or the girls’ school to attend. Almost everyone Jamie previously thought was an ally suddenly seems suspect. Even their affirming, supportive parents want them to “just PICK ONE… Stop attention-seeking.” If that’s how it’s going to be, Jamie decides, they’re just going to have to “speak up”—and they do. All the adults are quite willing to be supportive of a trans student, as long as they can fit that student’s gender into one of two tidy slots. So Jamie begins an activism campaign, which eventually leads to a news helicopter, a police interrogation, and (most importantly) qualified success. Olly, Jamie’s exuberantly gay older brother who enjoys wearing makeup and dresses, is an affectionate, funny delight. Their best friends, Daisy Adewumi and Ash Choudhary, whose own problems Jamie ultimately learns to acknowledge and respect even if they at first see them as not being “real problems,” are supportive and clever. Between chapters, Jamie provides clear, accessible definitions of concepts and terms related to the book’s central themes. Jamie is cued white; there’s ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.
Excels at being educational without sacrificing charm, humor, or excitement. (resources) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781499816815
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yellow Jacket
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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