A winner with lots of great moves.
Four sixth graders who belong to a chess club learn about playing the game and also about themselves.
Halima Kasim’s favorite thing is chess. While she cherishes online play and texting moves with her cousin in Somalia, where her extended family lives, Halima wishes there were more “over the board” opportunities in her small town. When her queer best friend, Jemma Knight, who reads white, suggests she create an after-school chess club, Halima is hesitant. She knows the game, but can she be a leader? Summoning her confidence, Halima makes her opening moves: finding an adviser and recruiting Jem as her first member. The club soon gains two new members—white-presenting Parker Finnegan, who wants to stand out from his athletic twin siblings, and artsy Daniel Yang, who’s cued Chinese American and joins after finding a mysterious note in a library book. They’re distinct individuals who learn the value of teamwork; together they build friendships, immerse themselves in the world of chess, and navigate the roller coaster that is middle school. Alternating among all four kids’ perspectives, Donnelly effectively fuses various social themes, like navigating the loss of friendships, dealing with bullying, and being a good sport, with basic information about chess game play and history. Duffy’s grayscale illustrations delineate sections in coordination with clever on-theme names. Diagrams showing chess moves instruct budding players and help readers visualize the action.
A winner with lots of great moves. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328571
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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