Strange and genuinely introspective.
What happens when invisible friends won’t leave you alone?
It’s three weeks into the school year, and Josh Duncan is prepared for his first day of fifth grade after his family’s move, armed with his inhaler and a new raincoat for the perpetually wet Pacific Northwest weather. Josh tells himself it won’t be like the first day of kindergarten, when he got an awkward nickname and saw Big Brother for the first time. Yet Big Brother is there, speaking in Josh’s ear despite the distance from his old backyard, where his parents made him bury a rock with Big Brother’s name on it. Meanwhile, Lucas Hernandez isn’t sure what’s up with the new kid, but he’s dealing with his own recently reappeared apparition: Maxie Moon. If Lucas does this one thing for Maxie, she tells him, she’ll leave him alone for good. Lucas’ name and some casually dropped Spanish signals his distinction from his assumed-white classmates, and Josh, who is white, displays symptoms of social anxiety. Blurring the line between imaginary friends and ghosts, Nickerson creates an atmospheric narrative that turns typically mundane activities, like riding a bike around the neighborhood, into existential ponderings on borderlines and time. Readers can dive in and get lost in ambiguous, creepy elements that will prepare them for the horror of Stephen King.
Strange and genuinely introspective. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-99442-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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