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PLANET EARTH IS BLUE

Stellar.

In Panteleakos’ debut, a nonverbal, autistic astronomy enthusiast counts down to the space shuttle Challenger’s launch—and her runaway sister’s return—in January 1986.

Twelve-year-old Nova Vezina hates deviating from routine, which makes moving from 11 foster homes in seven years challenging. But each new school’s verdict is the same: “Cannot read. Cannot speak. Severely mentally retarded.” A “thinker, not a talker,” Nova can’t explain that her big sister, Bridget, taught her the alphabet and read her novels, such as Peter Pan. Bridget disappeared after they ran from their last home, but she’d promised they’d watch the Challenger’s launch together. As Nova counts down the remaining 10 days, third-person chapters alternate with Nova’s printed letters to Bridget (“scribbles” to everyone else), which grow uneasy as Bridget doesn’t appear. Interspersed flashbacks reveal the sisters’ turbulent past and sensitively illustrate the uncertainty of foster care. The author poetically immerses readers in Nova’s mind as Nova endures “the constant scratching of sounds that [invade] her brain,” befriends fellow special education classmates, and struggles to be understood by both well-meaning and patronizing adults. Bursting with worry, joy, empathy, humor, and even mischief, Nova is endearingly nuanced. The countdown’s multiple conclusions dovetail in an ending Nova might call “Crayola Pine Green”: a mixture of conflicting emotions that will linger long after the last page. An author’s note provides background on autism and the Challenger disaster. Nova and Bridget are ethnically ambiguous; Nova’s foster mother is light-skinned, her foster father dark-skinned, and her foster sister biracial.

Stellar. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: May 14, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-525-64657-0

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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WRECKING BALL

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14

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

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CHARLOTTE'S WEB

The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...

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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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