A powerful exploration of grief.
An 11-year-old girl processes the end of her world and prepares for a new beginning.
What happens after the world ends? Kemi Carter contemplates this as she counts down the last four days before a possible apocalypse brought about by the looming presence of Amplus-68. The asteroid has an 84.7% chance of colliding with Earth. Keen scientist Kemi knows that the likelihood of survival is slim. She looks up facts about asteroids and investigates what the end of the world would be like, but she realizes that her family members are handling this differently than she is. Kemi decides to start a time capsule preserving something each of them loves so “the next earthlings could find it and know about us.” As Kemi, who has an African American dad and a Nigerian mom, gathers mementos, she reflects on what life has been like since they moved to their new, prosperous, primarily White neighborhood—a change that has brought complications. These memories lead up to a shocking plot twist that will have readers questioning her reality. Everett skillfully uses Kemi’s love of facts and statistics to process her feelings; as the story slowly reaches its climax, this element helps tie its many themes together. Individual family members are fleshed out as they share stories of their cherished possessions and demonstrate their support of Kemi in various ways. This realistically drawn, gut-wrenching novel will stick with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
A powerful exploration of grief. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780063256552
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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