A quiet story that will resonate with quiet readers.
A road trip with her older sister and her sister’s baby help a seventh-grader understand her place in her complicated, well-meaning family.
When Cassie’s sister, Julia, became pregnant at only 17, her parents rallied to support her and enable her to graduate high school. Now that goal has been achieved, but the girls’ parents are still in full support-Julia mode while seemingly unconscious of the toll their dictates have taken on Cassie. She has had to miss important swim meets to attend family prenatal classes, and some of her friends are no longer allowed at her house. Cassie loves her niece but is rattled by the changes in her relationship with her sister. Meanwhile Julia’s friends and boyfriend are heading to college, while she’ll be commuting part time. Fed up, Julia grabs the baby and hits the road—and at the last minute Cassie comes along. As they hop from place to place, always finding somewhere for Cassie to swim, they gradually begin to communicate better. Julia gains confidence as a mother, and Cassie sees in Julia’s love for Addie a reflection of the love Julia and her parents have always held for Cassie. Told from Cassie’s first-person point of view, it’s a nice reflection on the messiness of even strong relationships. All of the characters seem to be white.
A quiet story that will resonate with quiet readers. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-7179-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder.
After being home-schooled for years, Auggie Pullman is about to start fifth grade, but he’s worried: How will he fit into middle school life when he looks so different from everyone else?
Auggie has had 27 surgeries to correct facial anomalies he was born with, but he still has a face that has earned him such cruel nicknames as Freak, Freddy Krueger, Gross-out and Lizard face. Though “his features look like they’ve been melted, like the drippings on a candle” and he’s used to people averting their eyes when they see him, he’s an engaging boy who feels pretty ordinary inside. He’s smart, funny, kind and brave, but his father says that having Auggie attend Beecher Prep would be like sending “a lamb to the slaughter.” Palacio divides the novel into eight parts, interspersing Auggie’s first-person narrative with the voices of family members and classmates, wisely expanding the story beyond Auggie’s viewpoint and demonstrating that Auggie’s arrival at school doesn’t test only him, it affects everyone in the community. Auggie may be finding his place in the world, but that world must find a way to make room for him, too.
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86902-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
PROFILES
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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