Quibbles aside, a satisfying read that strikes a good balance between emotional highs and page-turning adventure.
A middle school boy and girl, each with a character trait that impedes relationships—Audrey always knows when someone is lying, and Aaron has an indelible memory but no emotional intelligence—develop an unlikely friendship in a wilderness camp.
After various difficulties in their separate schools, Audrey’s and Aaron’s parents enroll them in a desert wilderness camp for 13- and 14-year-olds, where they hike a 200-mile route known as the Journey to Confidence. The other members of the group include the very sad Kate, Louis, who is hypersensitive to stimulation, and Daphne, who is furious at everyone, especially her mother. In fits and starts, the two peculiar protagonists develop an improbable yet believable trust, which in turn gives them a kind of synergistic problem-solving agency. The premise—a pair of oddballs help each other approach normal—is beyond tried and true, yet the authors deliver it with enough permutations to keep it fresh. Specifically, the mix of other troubled kids adds complexity, and the harsh desert landscape conveys wonder and majesty. There are some credibility problems; Audrey’s gift is hard to buy, as is the group leader’s judgment, and although the authors wring a goodly amount of pathos out of Aaron’s character, his hyperfactual Asperger-like personality mix is very familiar.
Quibbles aside, a satisfying read that strikes a good balance between emotional highs and page-turning adventure. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-227465-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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