Eye-opening and heartwarming.
A sixth grader with cerebral palsy learns that magic takes many forms.
Though she’d rather attend a magic school, Lil Evers, who uses a motorized wheelchair and alternates between talking and using a speech device, currently attends the Exceptional Children’s class at Willow Street Middle School. There, Lil and her friends, Scoot and Dora, are segregated from the rest of the student body by the assistant principal, who disguises her ableism as concern for their safety. Undaunted, the friends create their own magic school with their imaginations. When a lucky escape from bullies sparks rumors that the role-playing trio’s magic is real, Willow Street’s students inundate Lil and her friends with good luck charm requests—and the spells seemingly work! But not everyone’s happy. Someone’s following Lil and leaving threatening notes. And in conservative, economically depressed Eden Point, North Carolina, rumors of magic—“the devil’s work”—could lead to the already struggling middle school’s closure. The mother-daughter author duo, one of whom uses a wheelchair and speech device, highlight such topics as education laws while emphasizing the importance of community and hope. Though some secondary characters feel cliched, Lil’s portrayal is refreshingly nuanced; her frustration with augmentative communication and ambivalence about transitioning to mainstreaming are sympathetic, and the bonds among her friend group are endearing. Lil and Dora read white, and Scoot is cued Black and neurodivergent.
Eye-opening and heartwarming. (authors’ note, discussion questions, activities) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780316581264
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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