A timely book encouraging youth to get involved.
A 12-year-old girl leads a mayoral campaign in hopes of saving arts education.
Maddie Polansky loves art class—it’s the only thing that makes school bearable since she doesn’t have many friends and most teachers seem to dislike her—and dreams of being a professional cartoonist. When Mr. Xian, her beloved art teacher, tells her about Lucinda Burghart, the woman running unopposed for mayor who wants to slash funding for arts education, Maddie is ready to enact change. There are just two problems: She can’t legally run for mayor and her preoccupied, noncommittal parents aren’t nearly as worked up about this as she is. But Janet, her recent college graduate nanny, is a viable option. Janet accepts Maddie unconditionally and encourages her activism. They register Janet as a mayoral candidate just under the deadline, kicking off Maddie’s crash course in democratic processes. After a minor scandal, the campaign looks hopeless, forcing Maddie to seek out help from an unlikely source: her classmates. Maddie—who believes it’s her quirks, not her lack of a filter, that keep her from connecting with others—guides the long-shot team in hopes of improving society. This energetic, mindful book reinforces the agency of children and will inspire them to take action. Black-and-white cartoonlike illustrations throughout are often humorous and reinforce Maddie’s uncensored opinions. Maddie is White, Janet is brown-skinned, and there is diversity throughout.
A timely book encouraging youth to get involved. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3974-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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