Hershey’s hilarious sequel to My Big Sister Is So Bossy She Says You Can't Read this Book (2006) throbs with energy and narrator Effie’s warm, sarcastic wit. Life goes on with her now-divorced dad in prison, but Effie’s more exuberant because she has two tremendous best friends. She gets worried, however, when best friend Aurora wants to transfer to a school with a hot basketball team and escape the boys at St. Dom’s who tease her about her burgeoning breasts. In solidarity, Effie and her other best friend Nit don empty bras that create slight bumps under their shirts. Effie is further unnerved when Mom invites a college friend to take sanctuary in their home while he struggles with his vocation as a Catholic priest, and her older sister begins to affect religious behavior. Effie agonizes about the possibility that her mother may be falling for another loser like dad. All Hershey’s characters are complex people, but it is Effie’s unique fourth-grade wisdom and way with words that will touch readers’ hearts and funny bones. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: July 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-73541-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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