Sweet and full of heart.
When his mom lands a new job, Héctor Muñoz leaves San Francisco—and his best friends and beloved neighborhood—for a town near Sacramento.
The Mexican American 12-year-old starts Orangevale Middle School with optimism, hopeful that new friends will appreciate his flair for fashion and confident that he will find fellow musical theater–obsessed peers. His optimism wanes when he finds out there is no drama club or theater program; Ms. Heath, the head of school security, seems to have targeted him for harsh discipline; and the Table of Misfits, a ragtag group of outsiders, is the only place for him to sit at lunch. Matters get worse when Mike, a relentlessly homophobic bully, and his so-called Minions target Héctor. When a janitor’s closet magically appears whenever and wherever Héctor most needs to hide, he finds a respite from the bullying. The room not only offers him safety, it also connects him to other outsiders who find their ways there from their own schools when they need escape: Black and Chinese Juliana from South Carolina and Filipino and White Sal from Arizona. With compassion and humor, Oshiro creates a fantastical scenario that holds deeper implications for three outsiders who face struggles as queer and biracial youths. Reading this heartwarming blend of realistic fiction and fantasy, young people will appreciate Héctor’s brave and earnest quest for happiness and belonging set among a richly diverse cast of characters.
Sweet and full of heart. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300810-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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