A welcome return to Mickey’s primarily Latinx world.
In Mickey Rangel’s fifth mystery, like many kids his age, the title character is faced with a new kid in class who is less than welcoming. But how do you help someone who doesn’t want to change?
Readers first see Mickey at the breakfast table with his parents and twin brother, Ricky, as he fills them in on his current plight. The new kid in school, Marco, is “mean as a skunk” and a full-on bully. After not just witnessing Marco’s cruel behavior, but experiencing it firsthand when Marco punches him in the stomach to keep him quiet, Mickey decides he has to do something. Using his skills as a private investigator (don’t worry, he has a certificate!), Mickey begins to speak with and interview other students and teachers about how to handle a bully. A quick search of the internet provides some kidcentric help from www.stopbullying.gov/index.html (an actual website sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and gives him the final answers he needs to solve this real-world problem. Readers may wish for a bit more sleuthing since the story is quick and perhaps resolves rather too quickly. However, it’s a solid resource for younger kids to learn about how best to tackle a bully and how to find your voice and speak up for not only yourself, but those around you. Baeza Ventura’s Spanish translation immediately follows the English story.
A welcome return to Mickey’s primarily Latinx world. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55885-866-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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