by Michael Fry & Bradley Jackson illustrated by Michael Fry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2018
Fun for fans of fantasy and flatulence.
Fry and Jackson team up again in this sequel to The Naughty List (2015).
Roberta “Bobbie” Mendoza would give anything just to be “normal.” Starting a new school is difficult enough without the need to conceal the secret of her past brush with Trans-Dimensional Beings. Having saved Christmas does not make her a hero; it just makes her “weird.” Cole Crusterman, another weirdo, is the only student to even speak with her on the first day of school. Yet she has few opportunities to make more friends, as the new semester begins with the return of elfin accomplices from a previous quest, a stampede of unicorns, and a trip through a locker-based portal. Fast-paced adventures ensue, full of ridiculous chases, fantastical creatures, and ample scatological humor. All the while Bobbie is plagued by a recurring nightmare and simmering anxieties. In the end she must learn to embrace her fears in order to conquer them and discover that “there’s nothing wrong with being weird.” Short chapters include stream-of-consciousness first-person narrative prose interspersed with cartoon illustrations that further reveal Bobbie’s internal thoughts as well as the plot. The quality of writing does not make this title a standout in the genre, but the brevity, pacing, and humor are likely to appeal to reluctant readers, especially where there is appreciation for both ridiculous plot twists and fart jokes. Bobbie is assumed to be Latina (though her identity is not explored beyond her surname), while Cole is white.
Fun for fans of fantasy and flatulence. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265193-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
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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