Regardless, Chiyo’s affection for Emily Grace fascinates, and the message of friendship and peace between nations endures,...
A companion piece to Parenteau’s Ship of Dolls (2014), this historical novel explores the 1926 Dolls of Friendship international project, a gesture for peace between the U.S. and Japan, from the point of view of a girl growing up in Japan.
Eleven-year-old Chiyo can’t resist sneaking into Masako’s marriage meeting to see her sister’s future husband, Yamada Nori, for herself. Caught red-handed, she is sent to a girls’ school far away in Tsuchiura. According to Yamada Nori, she will learn proper behavior and put her “hill country wildness behind her.” If Chiyo does well and learns to model herself after Miyamoto Hoshi, a general’s daughter, she can return home for Masako’s wedding. Soon opportunity knocks. Together with her friend, Nakata Hana, and five others, Chiyo is selected to sing “The Welcome Song” during the ceremony in Tokyo to welcome the dolls from America. To everyone’s surprise, Chiyo becomes connected to one doll, Emily Grace, setting off a pathway to self-discovery. Chiyo’s struggle to live up to societal and gender-based expectations while also following her heart feels genuine and cheer-worthy. She questions the norm while respecting tradition, no matter how seemingly unfair. Her battles with Hoshi, however, appear one-dimensional, with a less-than-satisfying resolution between the two.
Regardless, Chiyo’s affection for Emily Grace fascinates, and the message of friendship and peace between nations endures, while a small-town girl’s honor is redefined. (author’s note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7752-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
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