In 1959, a spunky 12-year-old decides to make some money to buy a Barbie doll by writing to her Senator’s beautiful wife, Jackie Kennedy, in this truly funny debut novel. Abby wants to be a fashion designer and has concocted some lovely ensembles for Jackie just in case Senator Kennedy decides to run for President. She charges only a few cents for each design. But will Jackie reply to Abby? Meanwhile, Abby’s extended family creates comedy and drama, while Abby avoids her uncaring father and her apparently unfeeling mother, who appears mostly to be concerned with maintaining the traditions of their Eastern European Jewish origins. Abby also greatly regrets a nasty trick she plays on her elderly neighbors, who just might not be witches, as her Aunt believes. Axelrod emphasizes the comedy while building up to some heartfelt drama. Young readers will appreciate the author’s decision to reveal the fallibility of the adults in Abby’s life. Abby’s earnest letters to Jackie, with numerous postscripts and enclosed fashion drawings (not seen), stand out as especially sweet. Abby is an especially memorable protagonist, but all her characters vibrate with life. The 1959 suburban Massachusetts environment comes across beautifully as well. Axelrod takes the narrative up to November 1961, with no hint of the later assassination. Funny, lively, sensitive—a real winner. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2340-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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