Fans will be pleased with this third installment in a delightful series.
Mary Lambert returns for a journey that takes her to London and Paris in this follow-up to Set Me Free (2021).
It’s 1810 and Mary, a deaf white teenage girl, is the teacher in her village on Martha’s Vineyard. In her world, deaf and hearing people live and work together, and nearly everyone knows Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. As in the previous books, Mary leaves home, this time to travel with missionaries to Europe and learn how schools for the deaf are run there. Though this experience is far less harrowing than her first two adventures, she still encounters audism at every turn, ranging from condescension to an attempt to sell her to a workhouse. LeZotte’s prose is as lovely and descriptive as ever, vividly depicting Mary’s world as well as her inner life, which is plagued by the traumas of her previous experiences. The author continues to comment on not only audism but also varied prejudices and colonization. Without turning the story into a lecture, she depicts the benefits of bilingual education for deaf students and weaves Mary into Deaf history as she comes into her own as a deaf educator. The open ending does leave space for Mary to grow in the minds of readers, but it feels comparatively underwhelming and unresolved. This book may be enjoyed on its own but is better appreciated as a continuation of Mary’s story.
Fans will be pleased with this third installment in a delightful series. (additional information) (Historical fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781338742503
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
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
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