by Louise Galveston ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2015
Instead of satire, readers get a zany adventure, which would be perfectly satisfactory—if it were zany enough. (Fantasy....
This sequel to By the Grace of Todd (2014) sees the return of the title character and his acolytes.
There’s no question this duology is based on a brilliant premise. Todd accidentally created a race of tiny people, the Toddlians, who worship him as a god. They grew out of one of his dirty socks. Nothing here is quite as ingenious. The plot revolves around a standard-issue bully, who wants to kidnap the Toddlians and use them as a science-fair project. Meanwhile, the Toddlians experience a crisis of faith, and a schism threatens. Fortunately, a few of the supporting characters offer readers something to engage with. There’s Todd’s younger sister, whose baby talk turns out to be fluent Toddlian and who has complex theories about art. And there’s Charity, the prettiest girl in school, who’s obsessed with “Dragon Sensei” games and cartoons. She seems to have a crush on Todd, surprising everyone. But too many characters are simply annoying, like Persephone, a Toddlian dissenter, who speaks in cowgirl clichés, including “dadgum” and “sick as a sow’s ear.” The premise might have inspired a religious allegory or a satire, but Galveston just doesn’t seem to want to go there.
Instead of satire, readers get a zany adventure, which would be perfectly satisfactory—if it were zany enough. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59514-679-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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by Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Julie Morstad
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by Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Chris Van Dusen
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by Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Sophie Blackall
by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
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
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by E.B. White & illustrated by Maggie Kneen
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by E.B. White illustrated by Fred Marcellino
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams
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