Beatrice Zinker is a positive model for conflict resolution, third-grade style.
Beatrice Zinker returns.
The second installment of this promising series for newly independent readers doesn’t exactly stand alone. Readers new to the series must sort out the diverse cast of stock characters—quiet and kind Wes, the somewhat bossy Chloe, mysterious new girl Sam Darzi—while Beatrice continues her struggle to find her place in the school hierarchy. Once they do, they’ll find it’s the second week of third grade, and Operation Upside, begun in Beatrice Zinker, Upside Down Thinker (2017), is fully underway. But as with all too many endeavors undertaken by Beatrice and her best friend, Eleanor “Lenny” Santos, things are not going according to plan. Staying incognito, much less focused, is not easy for the impetuous and fidgety protagonist. An unexpected disguise for a spy who prefers hiding in trees and hanging upside down—dressing in pink—doesn’t help her escape notice. Mrs. Tamarack (a teacher reminiscent of Viola P. Swamp) strictly enforces a long list of rules and seems to have it in for Beatrice. Predictably, everything turns out fine, and as in the first book, Beatrice adds another friend to her social circle. Twenty-five short chapters and line drawings on almost every spread (depicting Beatrice with pale skin and her classmates as racially diverse) ensure success for readers not yet used to tackling longer texts.
Beatrice Zinker is a positive model for conflict resolution, third-grade style. (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6739-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Fantasy training wheels for chapter-book readers.
Elliot’s first day of school turns out to be more than he bargained for.
Elliot Eisner—skinny and pale with curly brown hair—is a bit nervous about being the new kid. Thankfully, he hits it off with fellow new student, “punk rock”–looking Uchenna Devereaux, a black girl with twists (though they actually look like dreads in Aly’s illustrations). On a first-day field trip to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, the pair investigates a noise in the trees. The cause? A Jersey Devil: a blue-furred, red-bellied and -winged mythical creature that looks like “a tiny dragon” with cloven hooves, like a deer’s, on its hind feet. Unwittingly, the duo bonds with the creature by feeding it, and it later follows them back to the bus. Unsurprisingly, they lose the creature (which they alternately nickname Jersey and Bonechewer), which forces them to go to their intimidating, decidedly odd teacher, Peruvian Professor Fauna, for help in recovering it. The book closes with Professor Fauna revealing the truth—he heads a secret organization committed to protecting mythical creatures—and inviting the children to join, a neat setup for what is obviously intended to be a series. The predictable plot is geared to newly independent readers who are not yet ready for the usual heft of contemporary fantasies. A brief history lesson given by a mixed-race associate of Fauna’s in which she compares herself to the American “melting pot” manages to come across as simultaneously corrective and appropriative.
Fantasy training wheels for chapter-book readers. (Fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3170-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rescued dog saves an unhappy, silent boy in this gentle story about families, fears and courage.
As she did most recently in Waiting for the Magic (2011), Newbery Medalist MacLachlan shows the support that pets can provide. Zoe’s mother fosters abandoned Great Pyrenees dogs. But when Jack, a new dog, runs away, 9-year-old Phillip, a new neighbor, runs after him. He gets lost, but the dog leads him to a barn where they shelter from a night of rain and hail. Phillip’s parents are having problems; he’s staying for a while with a childless aunt and uncle with little experience with children or dogs, and he won’t talk to anyone. Zoe’s family, on the other hand, is close, chatty and compassionate. They care for each other and for their rescued animals: not only the massively shedding white dogs, but also an African grey parrot whose favorite phrase is “You can’t know.” True. There is much you can't know about people and animals both, and much you don’t know, still, after the story ends. Zoe recalls the experience in a narrative occasionally interrupted by ruminative, present-tense glimpses of Zoe with the dogs at night and summed up in her little sister Alice’s concluding journal entry. The spare prose and extensive dialogue leaves room for the reader’s imagination and sympathy. Beautifully told, quietly moving and completely satisfying. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2171-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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