Although straight commercial fiction, this lightly amusing first-person tale delivers a smoothly entertaining ride ending...
Having just moved to Maine, 13-year-old Hannah Smart gets herself into big trouble when she lies, telling her new classmates that she’s an ace skier and snowboarder.
The way Hannah, in her second outing (more absorbing than the first), gets into this situation is neatly set up and completely understandable. However, her continued insistence that she’s a first-rate skier and the complicated set of lies that follows is cringeworthy and hard to swallow. And even though it’s clearly explained, the hatred she immediately engenders in classmates Chloe and Ivy seems way over the top. Things pick up plotwise when Fitzpatrick’s effervescent heroine gets a job as a gofer at the local television station, the same station where her father works as a meteorologist. A freak accident during which Hannah saves the day puts her on the air, and her charisma is such that she immediately scores her own weekly segment. How Hannah manages her job—interestingly, the characters of her adult co-workers are more layered than her classmates—while simultaneously negotiating a new school and all that goes with it is the stuff and substance of the rest of this easy-breezy novel.
Although straight commercial fiction, this lightly amusing first-person tale delivers a smoothly entertaining ride ending with a deft setup of the final book in the series. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4597-3157-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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