An emotionally intelligent preteen summer camp adventure.
Rising seventh grader Beatrice prefers to spend time in her room talking to her stuffed animals, especially her favorite one, a rabbit named Roger.
So, when Bea’s father tells her he’s signed her up for a weeklong summer camp, that’s the last thing she wants to do. After her dad promises that if she agrees to go just this once, she’ll never have to go back, she reluctantly agrees. When Bea arrives at Camp Chordata, she meets her “nest mates,” Virginia and Roxy. Virginia notices Bea holding Roger and snidely asks, “Aren’t we a little old to carry around stuffed animals?” She adds, “You will be judged for carrying that around.” Unfortunately, Virginia is proven to be right, but a cute boy stands up for her. Over the course of the week, the girls struggle with learning to be friends as each battles personal problems. The narrative moves quickly, but Montague delves effectively into a range of topics such as jealousy, bullying, insecurity, and divorce. The story offers readers a thoughtful perspective on how you never know exactly what someone might be dealing with based on outward appearances. All three girls have brown skin; Bea has curly brown hair, Virginia (whose skin tone is darkest) has red hair, and Roxy (whose skin is slightly lighter) is blond. The clean, simply drawn panels and warm pastel colors effectively evoke the outdoor summer setting.
An emotionally intelligent preteen summer camp adventure. (drawing guide) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780593806234
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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