This series opener is as heartwarming as a fresh cinnamon scone.
Scarlett’s mother’s blog posts are about Scarlett—and they’re always humiliating.
Mom is a rising superstar blogger whose shtick is parenting advice. This is great for their single-parent, two-child family’s budget but not for Scarlett’s emotional health. Mom is ruthless, bordering on cruel. Examples of her thoughtlessness include “Psst…Want to Know a Secret? My Daughter’s Best Friend Is Really Dull” and “Bye-Bye, Harvard: My Daughter Has No Interests.” Scarlett used to have friends (the former post drove her best friend away) and interests; she was outgoing and participated in clubs and activities, but she’s become withdrawn and boring in order to deprive Mom of material. When her elderly neighbor is hospitalized, Scarlett enters the woman’s house to investigate mysterious screams (phew—it’s just the cat) and gets an unexpected surprise: a chef-grade kitchen and a very special handmade cookbook. Scarlett wants to try the recipes, but how to do it without Mom finding out? There’s that beautiful kitchen next door. Soon she’s making lovely scones and new friends. The irony that Mom ignores her in order to give her followers parenting advice is not lost on Scarlett, who narrates with humor tinged with melancholy and makes the somewhat outrageous premise believable. Disappointingly, considering the prominence of food and cooking in the story, there’s only one recipe. The book assumes a white default.
This series opener is as heartwarming as a fresh cinnamon scone. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6964-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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