Fun accompanied by useful life lessons.
Nine-year-old Lucy McGee is enduring the type of manipulative bullying that’s familiar to many grade schoolers.
Popular Scarlett (whose bedroom features white carpeting!) invites her to join a new crafts club at her house. Lucy is supposed to be attending a school club, but who can turn down an invitation from someone like Scarlett? Sadly, the first club meeting only involves Lucy cleaning out the filthy garden shed while Scarlett crafts decorations. The following week, Scarlett convinces Lucy to take paint from the art room, telling her the teacher has given permission. Not only is that a lie, but when the pair gets to Scarlett’s house, it’s Lucy who has to do the messy wall painting while Scarlett rests. Bedazzled by Scarlett, Lucy repeatedly skips the Songwriting Club started by Phillip, a nice classmate who could use a friend. With brief text, characters are only sketched but are fully recognizable nonetheless. Thanks to Phillip’s friendly overtures, her parents’ gentle guidance, and some soul-searching, spirited Lucy eventually finds a better path to walk than being Scarlett’s hapless sycophant, offering a nondidactic message to readers as well. Lucy and Scarlett appear white in Meserve’s humorous sketches, but Phillip’s skin is a shade darker. The children’s spontaneous songs—all cleverly rhymed—are included along with a link to an online audio version.
Fun accompanied by useful life lessons. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3871-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A fun-if-flimsy vehicle for science lovers.
A fifth grade girl brings her love of chemistry to the school play.
Kate loves science so much she’s determined to breathe fire. Of course she knows that she needs adult supervision, and so, with her science teacher’s help, Kate demonstrates an experiment with cornstarch and a blowtorch that nearly sets her teacher’s cactus on fire. Consequences ensue. Can someone who loves science as much as Kate does find pleasure spending her fall break at drama camp? It turns out that even the school play—Dragons vs. Unicorns—needs a chemist, though, and Kate saves the day with glue and glitter. She’s sabotaged along the way, but everything is fine after Kate and her frenemy agree to communicate better (an underwhelming response to escalating bullying). Doodles decorate the pages; steps for the one experiment described that can be done at home—making glittery unicorn-horn glue—are included. The most exciting experiments depicted, though, include flames or liquid nitrogen and could only be done with the help of a friendly science teacher. Biberdorf teaches chemistry at the University of Texas and also performs science-education programs as “Kate the Chemist”; in addition to giving her protagonist her name and enthusiasm, she also seems represented in Kate-the-character’s love of the fictional YouTube personality “Dr. Caroline.” Kate and her nemesis are white; Kate’s best friends are black and South Asian.
A fun-if-flimsy vehicle for science lovers. (Fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11655-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gentle, encouraging, witty fantasy that may soothe readers suffering from climate anxiety.
Children with magical talking steam trains are thrilled by their clever new plan to rescue endangered animals.
Eleven-year-old Kate absolutely adores her secret job—helping animals in need by using the magical locomotive that was a gift from her billionaire wizard uncle. Kate loves riding the Silver Arrow with Uncle Herbert; her brother, Tom; and the talking animals they escort to safe places. But now Uncle Herbert is missing, 9-year-old Tom seems more interested in hapkido than their supernatural train, and Kate’s struggling socially and academically thanks to her eco-anxiety. No matter how many animals she helps, no matter how many adults proclaim that climate change is a critical issue, the environment keeps getting worse. One night Kate discovers another train driving on the magical railroad: The Golden Swift is conducted by her classmate Jag, who thinks rescuing stranded creatures isn’t sufficiently radical. When Kate joins him, she feels more inspired and more righteous than ever before. This time, she’s actually making the world better! Kate’s unhappy discoveries of unintended consequences and the moral complexities of her activism are softened by humor. The snarky banter of the talking locomotive is an understated delight, as is the train constructed with, among others, candy and ice cream cars, an invisible car, and a dojo car. Kate and Tom are White; Jag is described as having dark skin and black hair and possibly being Indian. Charming illustrations enhance the text.
Gentle, encouraging, witty fantasy that may soothe readers suffering from climate anxiety. (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-28354-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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