Rather overstuffed.
When Archer arrives home at Rosewood from boarding school, finally to meet the grandparents he has never known, he quickly learns about a dastardly campaign against the returning explorers.
Oliver Glub, whose newspaperman father owns the Doldrums Press, and Adélaïde, the neighboring French girl, are Archer’s best friends. They show Archer the slanderous news stories being published by the untrustworthy Rosewood Chronicle, stories that claim the explorers fabricated their stranded-on-an-iceberg story, are insane, and have caused an unusually snowy winter. When Grandma and Grandpa Helmsley arrive, they take the children to visit the huge campus of the Society, whose current president, Herbert Birthwhistle, has been trying to ostracize the grandparents—or probably worse. Archer’s determined to help, but the evil Mr. Mullfort, Birthwhistle’s confederate, threatens to disappear the three children. As in the first book, there are amusing descriptions, madcap excursions, and narrow escapes from danger. The effects of herbal Doxical Powder fuel a funny party scene. Unfortunately, Adélaïde’s wooden leg, which worked its way so organically into the first book, has now become an uncomfortable, overly frequent, semicomical reference. There is also a long sequence during which the friends are using a ham radio—not apt to excite contemporary readers. It is heartening, however, that the text sets readers right on the often misunderstood history of chocolate. The full-color illustrations depict a cozy, quaint village and its residents, seemingly mostly white.
Rather overstuffed. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-232097-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
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