Thoughtful slice-of-life realness.
Moving is hard, but so is staying still while others move on.
Middle schooler Leah lives in an Army neighborhood, where one of the signs of spring near the base is the appearance of for-sale signs in front of houses. Eleven-year-old Leah has already moved five times, but this year, she gets to stay put. Instead her best friend, Sam, is leaving for Edmonton, and Leah’s summer and upcoming birthday look bleak. Her father has come back on leave, but the family knows to tread carefully when he’s around. His moods are unpredictable: Sometimes he seems fine, sometimes he's withdrawn, and sometimes his temper is explosive. Leah is nervous since her mom and older sister will both be away—her sister working as a camp counselor and her mom in Army Reserve training. The only interesting thing to occur is a camper parked in a nearby driveway belonging to a girl named Cecilia who is housesitting with her mom. This graphic novel explores some tough realities for Army families, though many readers will be able to identify with friends’ moving away. The portrayal of Leah’s relationship with her father is nuanced, although the abrupt conclusion does it a disservice. His PTSD symptoms manifest as shouting and breaking objects. The inviting art is classic comic-strip style with sturdy lines and soft color washes. Leah’s family is White; Sam’s reads White and Black, and Cecilia and her mom are Wolastoqiyik.
Thoughtful slice-of-life realness. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4598-2839-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
