Silly shoes and villainous caprices fail to sustain a book of this length.
Can the Foot family win a footwear design competition against the terrible Wendy Wedge and win the Golden Shoe Award?
Ruby and Bear live in the Shoebox neighborhood in Shoe Town with their Dad, Ivor Foot, in a house shaped like a shoebox. Ivor ran a shoe shop making amazing footwear designed by his wife, Sally, but after Sally died in a mysterious accident, Ivor became the victim of the evil Wendy Wedge, a jealous rival shoemaker and de facto owner of Shoe Town. Wendy made Ivor sign over the rights to all their property and designs, then demolished the shop—although Dad secretly managed to save a pair of Sally’s flying shoes. Aided by his plucky kids, resourceful Dad develops a plan to foil Wendy and win the coveted Golden Shoe Award. Complex hijinks ensue ad nauseam. Although the cartoony, black-and-white line illustrations and funky use of typography lend visual variety to the pages, the book is, fundamentally, too long. The introduction of shoemakers Betty Boot and Bert Brogue, who offer support to the children and help with the competition, does not alleviate the monotony of the thin plot and repetitious shoe humor. The Foot family and Wendy appear to be White; Betty and Bert read as Black.
Silly shoes and villainous caprices fail to sustain a book of this length. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-65474-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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