Winsome adventures in friendship, magic, and hands-on visual learning.
An escape from math class takes a turn for the magical.
Clementine, an anthropomorphic fox, loves adventure and hates math, but tell that to her concerned mom, who wants her to start seeing a tutor. Eager to escape the pressures of school, Clementine hatches a scheme to stow away on a ferry turtle and visit her great-aunt Marnie’s island with her friend Nubbins the squirrel. The resulting quest ends up involving Penelope the rabbit, Jesse the otter, fairylike siblings Puck and Flora, and several worried family members. The story nimbly balances all of these characters and their branching subplots without shortchanging any of them. For example, tension between Clementine and Penelope starts with rude comments but gives way to genuine connection, with each of them given time and space to grow. The cuteness and hilarity of the animal cast and richness of the coastal setting make every page a treat for the eyes. Hungry giants, conversations with trees, and a magic kiln all expand the possibilities of this story’s world without straining credulity. Clementine finds a style of learning math that works for her in a satisfying character arc that feels natural.
Winsome adventures in friendship, magic, and hands-on visual learning. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781338356250
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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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