Even for New Age parents and kids, Clara may be just too calm.
Mindfulness is the new hot topic in education, so this effort could be a timely addition to the “picture books for parenting” shelf.
Clara wants to be nice, but her temper flares when things don’t go her way. Eventually, her unpredictable behavior alienates her friends. Fortunately (and rather improbably) a wisecracking bird named Brodhi shows up poolside to teach her to “chill out”—slow down and breathe deep. The well-meaning message is clear, but that is part of the problem. The lesson overpowers the slight story. There is no doubt where the story is heading or how it will be resolved. The muted pastel illustrations are certainly calm but unlikely to draw in children who are not already calm themselves. Similarly, the picture-book format will be most attractive to young children, not the 8- to 12-year-olds Levitt seems to be targeting. Clara is white and decidedly middle-class. While she has two friends of color, the friend who features most prominently is also white. “Butter tarts,” a uniquely Canadian treat, also feature heavily in the story, which may puzzle U.S. readers.
Even for New Age parents and kids, Clara may be just too calm. (Picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61429-390-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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