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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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
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