While brief paperbacks for newly independent readers are too numerous to count, this one is slightly funnier and fresher...
Inventive and intrepid Justine McKeen, most likely a grade schooler, finds amusing ways to make classmates and community members more environmentally conscious.
School bully Jimmy Blatzo takes an immediate dislike to Justine after she fishes his carelessly discarded soda can out of the cafeteria trash. In retribution, he squashes her lunch flat and steals her brownies, not realizing they’re flavored with crushed crickets and intended for a science presentation. Aided off and on by her sidekicks, Safdar and Michael, she creates posters out of homemade recycled paper, constructs a greenhouse out of 1,500 soda bottles, and shames a local merchant into being more environmentally friendly. Simultaneously, she gradually defuses Blatzo’s anger and turns him into a reluctant ally. While none of the cardboard characters feature significant development, Justine is feisty enough to add some flavor to the mix. Her environmental efforts seem oversimplified and too easily accomplished, though. Brisk, very brief chapters are accompanied by lively full-page black-and-white illustrations. To complete the environmental package, the book is printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being from “responsible sources.” Endnotes provide suggestions for environmental projects included in the story, but they don’t mention particular websites.
While brief paperbacks for newly independent readers are too numerous to count, this one is slightly funnier and fresher than most. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55469-927-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
A labored effort to revive a series that never was quite as clever as it tried to be.
Another science experiment literally goes hair-raisingly wrong.
Following a 10-year hiatus, Franny returns to whip up more mad science in her bedroom laboratory. Initially rejecting her mother’s efforts to turn her on to hair spray and blow drying, Franny recalls that science is all about exploring the unknown (“Even if it’s the really super-weird stuff that moms like”) and so whips up a line of twisted beauty products. These include a Cosmetic Bazooka that blasts out whole, heavily made-up faces and “shoe polish” that turns high heels into really high heels. Eventually a version of the latter not only extends her pigtails to Rapunzel length, but brings them to life—whereupon they snip themselves off and rush out to menace every barber shop, salon, and furry pet in town. Cue a seesaw struggle which Franny, with help from her canine assistant Igor, ends by temporarily immobilizing her errant locks with hair spray and then presenting her mom with a new “fur” coat. Franny’s enthusiasm for hands-on experimentation, and the slightly menacing grimace she sports in many of the ink-and-wash cartoons that fill half or more of nearly every page, may add a certain raffish charm, but the quaint, not to say sexist, satiric tropes went stale long ago. Franny and her mom present white.
A labored effort to revive a series that never was quite as clever as it tried to be. (Science fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1337-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young environmentalists will appreciate seeing how facts can defy frenzy.
Through the investigations of young Cricket and her friends, readers learn how to distinguish evidence of a cougar from other animals—and are briefed on cougar conservation and monitoring.
When Cricket and her friend Shilo notice a foul smell coming from piled-up snow and branches under a bush, Cricket suspects that a cougar has hidden its dinner. Her father, Warden McKay, proves her right when he shows up at her school, giving an emergency presentation about cougars. A cougar has been seen in their village, which is located inside Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. After Cricket’s dad informs kids about some cougar facts, Principal Singh gives students a rare week off from school. It’s odd, then, that the warden’s children proceed to wander the village. However, McDowell’s books about Cricket typically favor facts about wildlife above all else, and, also typically, this one does not disappoint. It even clarifies one statistic as specifically Canadian. Overall, the dialogue is more natural than in Salamander Rescue (2016), if equally packed with information. The nine chapters and epilogue are accessible, entertaining, and empowering for young naturalists. The compelling plot twist: Anxious villagers are accusing cougars of a series of large-mammal crimes. Cricket, knowing that cougar relocation can be fatal, wants to ensure continued, occasional village visits by a family of tracked cougars. She devises a scheme to trap the real culprit. Illustrations are pleasant enough, depicting a largely white cast, though at least three characters have Asian surnames.
Young environmentalists will appreciate seeing how facts can defy frenzy. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4598-2064-7
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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