Well-intentioned but uneven.
A white 12-year-old from New Mexico with a facial difference finds a turquoise bead that changes her life.
To Mom, Pip’s port-wine birthmark is a sign of God’s blessing. To Pip, who’s subjected to bullying and ignorant, hurtful comments, it’s a curse. Pip plans to spend the summer hiding indoors but elderly neighbor Betty enlists her help with chores and Mom signs her up for archaeology camp. White-presenting Betty also tasks Pip with protecting Spire Rock, an Ancestral Puebloan site whose artifacts she regrets allowing her son to sell. After taking turquoise beads she finds there, Pip sees visions of a sad girl who seems to want the beads back. But Pip believes they’re good luck and that she was “meant to have them.” Nichols tackles tough topics, from disability to the appropriation of Native American land and culture. Pip’s fraught relationship with her mom, who grew up with a misaligned hip, is poignant, and Bowman’s black-and-white illustrations deftly convey characters’ emotions. But the resolution to Pip’s self-consciousness feels overly convenient, and the book evokes tired tropes around mystical Native peoples. Despite her own experiences, Pip doesn’t seem to connect the dots to her harsh internal descriptions of the appearances of people she dislikes. While Pip recognizes that Native Americans “were here and are still here,” her slow awakening and ongoing reluctance to return the beads may frustrate readers.
Well-intentioned but uneven. (map, recipe, author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781963832600
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Kinkajou/Artemesia
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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