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SUSIE B. WON'T BACK DOWN

Name: SUSIE B. WON'T BACK DOWN
Author: Margaret Finnegan
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9636-1

by Margaret Finnegan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2021

Engaging.

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Claremont, California, fifth grader Susie B. learns something about heroes, justice, passion, and friendship during the course of a school project and student election.

Susie’s epistolary account is addressed to the subject of her Hero Project. Susan B. Anthony seems an excellent choice, at first. Narrator Susie is energetic, breathless, enthusiastic, and genuinely, charmingly funny. She attributes her challenges with attention and the difficulty she had learning to read to her “butterfly brain.” Susie and her family are White, and she has an older, biracial half brother, Lock, from her mother’s first marriage to a Black man. Lock had similar issues with focus at her age, and he and Susie’s parents are loving and supportive. Susie plans to run for school president because of the opportunity to use the microphone at school assemblies, tell people what to do, and possibly advocate for polar bears and other important causes. Susie struggles with understanding social cues and also wrestles with her outrage after learning about Anthony’s betrayal of Black suffragists. When Susie’s best friend, Joselyn, pulls away and the election campaign seems to demand that she set aside her true self, she describes the disorientation as feeling like being in Oppositeland. Her account of her unhappiness manages to be both moving and humorous, and her determined striving for justice serves her well. Joselyn is Guatemalan American; their classmates’ names signal ethnic diversity.

Engaging. (Fiction. 8-11)

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5344-9636-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
SPELLING IT OUT
by Margaret Finnegan

- BOOK REVIEW
SUNNY PARKER IS HERE TO STAY
by Margaret Finnegan

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW KIDS & UNDERDOGS
by Margaret Finnegan

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TUCK EVERLASTING

by Natalie Babbitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1975

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...

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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.

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." (Fantasy. 9-11)

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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
TUCK EVERLASTING
by Natalie Babbitt ; adapted by K. Woodman-Maynard ; illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MOON OVER HIGH STREET
by Natalie Babbitt

- BOOK REVIEW
JACK PLANK TELLS TALES
by Natalie Babbitt

- SEEN & HEARD
Alexis Bledel To Read ‘Tuck Everlasting’ Audiobook

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DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

A NOVEL IN CARTOONS

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 1

by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2007

Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.

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First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.

Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.

Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)