Trudy’s persistence after initial failure will resonate even with middle graders who’ve never heard of the Fab Four.
“All I had was an invalid mother, three oddball friends, a father who didn’t know I was alive anymore, and a sliver of hope that meeting Paul McCartney could change all that.”
By the time Trudy makes this statement, readers know that she tends to overdramatize her life but also that she is determined to meet Paul McCartney. She is a sixth-grader who explains that she felt exhilarated when, in 1964, she began her elementary school’s Beatles Fan Club, which, by September of junior high, sported 23 members. Now, after April vacation, 1966, everything has changed: Her best friend is hanging out with cheerleaders; she is suddenly being teased about her full name, Gertrude; and her fan club has been reduced to herself, awkward Peter, uncool Jessica, and unkempt Nora. The good news: The Beatles will perform in August in Boston, just 50 miles from Trudy’s Rhode Island home. The text is laden with references to 1960s history, fashion, and popular culture—although air-raid drills go unmentioned. In a nice, perspective-lending touch, elevator music and disposable diapers are predicted for the future. All characters are default white. Trudy’s voice and her relationships with parents and peers ring true to an adolescent slowly making sense of her life and the people in it. Her perseverance, cleverness, and sense of humor will keep readers turning the pages to see if she does meet her favorite Beatle.
Trudy’s persistence after initial failure will resonate even with middle graders who’ve never heard of the Fab Four. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8511-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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
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