When nine-year-old Sarah’s best friend Paige deserts her at the beginning of the summer to join the hated “Double-Digit Club”—only for those girls who have turned ten—a miserable season looms. Rather than seeking alternative fun, as her mother suggests, Sarah instead sulks, turning to Lois Lowry books and Miss B., her elderly blind neighbor, for diversion. A classic Bauer struggle with conscience ensues when Sarah, on an illicit trip upstairs, discovers Miss B.’s treasured antique doll and “borrows” it, thinking to use it to win Paige back—with entirely predictable results. Sarah emerges as a distinct character, bossy (and blissfully unaware of it), headstrong, and with a gift for language: she paints “word pictures” for Miss B. and always has the nom juste for a new doll. The territory this slim volume covers is familiar enough, but Bauer, as usual, covers it well. Sarah’s wrestling with her better self is thoroughly believable, as is the nasty cliquishness that leaves her on the outside looking in. It’s a small work, with small aspirations, but what it does, it does nicely. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8234-1805-7
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
A nice and timely depiction of an immigrant child experience.
Speaking up is hard when you’re shy, and it can be even harder if you’ve got two languages in your head.
Third-grader Estrella “Stella” Díaz, is a shy, Mexican-American girl who draws pictures and loves fish, and she lives in Chicago with her mother and older brother, Nick. Jenny, Stella’s best friend, isn’t in her class this year, and Stella feels lonely—especially when she sees that Vietnamese-American Jenny is making new friends. When a new student, Stanley Mason, arrives in her class, Stella introduces herself in Spanish to the white former Texan without realizing it and becomes embarrassed. Surely Stanley won’t want to befriend her after that—but he seems to anyway. Stella often confuses the pronunciation between English and Spanish sounds and takes speech classes. As an immigrant with a green card—a “legal alien,” according to her teacher—Stella feels that she doesn’t fully belong to either American culture or Mexican culture, and this is nicely reflected in her not being fully comfortable in either language, an experience familiar to many immigrant and first-generation children. This early-middle-grade book features italicized Spanish words and phrases with direct translations right after. There is a small subplot about bullying from Stella’s classmate, and readers will cheer as they see how, with the help of her friends and family, Stella overcomes her shyness and gives a presentation on Jacques Cousteau. Dominguez’s friendly black-and-white drawings grace most pages.
A nice and timely depiction of an immigrant child experience. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-858-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is a rare book: joyful, ingenuous, playfully earnest, but without a whiff of studied cuteness.
Giraffe, bored and looking for a friend, becomes pen pals with Penguin in this illustrated chapter book.
Even though Giraffe has nice weather and plenty to eat in his home in Africa, he is bored because he doesn’t have “an extra special friend.” A notice from an also-bored pelican offering “to deliver anything anywhere” spurs Giraffe to write a letter introducing himself (“I’m famous for my long neck”), and he asks Pelican to deliver it to the first animal he meets on the “other side of the horizon.” After a long flight, Pelican sees Seal. Seal delivers the letter to Penguin, since Penguin is “the only animal…who got letters….Most were from his girlfriend.” This original, playful story unfolds with perfect pacing as Giraffe and Penguin start a pen-pal correspondence. (Penguin, not sure what a neck is, writes back: “I think maybe I don’t have a neck. Or maybe I am all neck?”) Giraffe and Pelican, reading Penguin’s letters describing himself, are just as confused about what Penguin looks like. Hilarious deductive reasoning ensues. Young readers will love the silliness. Older readers (including adults) will relax in this gentle, judgment-free world of curiosity and discovery. Takabatake’s fresh, unaffected line illustrations create a seamless collaboration of art and words.
This is a rare book: joyful, ingenuous, playfully earnest, but without a whiff of studied cuteness. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-9272-7188-9
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Gecko Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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