A fast-moving tale that leaves readers plenty to ponder.
A doctor’s daughter finds her vocation in a Colorado mining town.
Sissy Carlson, 13, lives with her widowed father and their housekeeper, the only mother figure she can remember. It’s 1880, and Sissy dreams of a career in medicine, but while her dad, Tenmile’s only doctor, has made her his assistant, he insists girls can’t be doctors despite accumulating evidence of her talents in this area. Sprawling high in the Tenmile Range, the Yellowcat Mine draws many European and Mexican immigrants and their families, though miners are paid little. The mine is noisy, polluting, and dangerous. Accidents are frequent, as is tuberculosis. Sissy and her friends vow to escape, but their plans are derailed when parents get sick, succumb to addiction, or value a child’s immediate earning potential over education’s deferred benefits. Aware of her financial privileges, Sissy learns to hear what goes unsaid and preserve the dignity of those who can’t pay for treatment. When her diligence comes to the attention of the mine’s owner, Mr. Gilpin, he hires her to tutor his son. Observant and curious, Sissy makes an empathetic tour guide to the era’s class and gender stratification. Meticulously compiled quotidian details ranging from heartbreaking to heartwarming effectively map the chasm separating the wealthy Gilpins from their impoverished employees. The central characters are presumed White.
A fast-moving tale that leaves readers plenty to ponder. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5341-1162-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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