Humorous, frank, and guaranteed to reassure.
Stuck at sleepaway camp without her best friend, a young tween finds herself.
Eleven-year-old Rubie Fox and her best friend, Riley Swisher, are ready to have the best summer ever at Camp Pineview, an all-girls sleepaway camp in Vermont. Together, they create the TUCE (“The Ultimate Camp Experience”) TRUCE: a list of five things they’ll do together. But when Riley breaks her ankle, Rubie must go to camp alone. Riley makes her promise not to do anything on their list—which includes common camp activities like “make friendship bracelets” and “eat s’mores by a fire.” At camp, everyone seems to already know each other, and Rubie’s struggles to find common interests only emphasize Riley’s absence. A bedtime pep talk from Jim the Duck, her beloved stuffed chicken, inspires Rubie to set a goal: Make one friend and turn this experience into something positive. Enter Eliza Sparrow, a talented comic artist who shares not only Rubie’s loves of art and grilled cheese but also has divorced parents and feels completely lost at camp. They become fast friends, but soon Rubie’s TUCE TRUCE promise rears its ugly head, and she feels stuck in the middle. Hijinks ensue, and Rubie learns how to navigate jealousy, embarrassment, honesty, and being true to yourself. Rubie’s funny and relatable musings, formatted as a diary with animated black-and-white doodles, will appeal to fans of series like Liz Montague’s Camp Frenemies and Marissa Moss’ Amelia’s Notebook. Main characters present white.
Humorous, frank, and guaranteed to reassure. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798347103997
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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