by Beth Vrabel ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2016
Honest, funny, and entertaining.
Most of the titular gang from Pack of Dorks (2014) is off to spend two weeks at seriously-roughing-it–style Camp Paleo. Sadly, Lucy’s not-a-boyfriend, Sam, is going to gymnastics camp instead.
That’s just the beginning of the bad news. Camp Paleo is hot, buggy, and fraught with emotional peril, as her friends behave in strange, inexplicable new ways. Most troubling is how April, previously, well, dorky, has now entirely “reinvented” herself and also has firmly bonded with the very annoying and unpleasant Kira. As feisty Lucy attempts to steer her friends into what she sees as the right directions for each, every matchmaking strategy backfires until she’s alienated almost every camper she cares about. Just as problematic is the fact that valuable personal possessions are going missing, and other campers are starting to think Lucy might be the thief. With good humor, Vrabel explores the pitfalls of emerging preteenhood. Not everyone gets there at the same time, leading to endless potential for humiliation, embarrassment, and, in the case of Sam and Lucy, awkwardness. Although not as clever and satisfying as the dorks' multilayered first outing, this quick read nonetheless effectively delves into interpersonal pitfalls that will be familiar to most older grade schoolers, and Lucy’s developing insight may even provide a few hints for staying on the right path.
Honest, funny, and entertaining. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63450-181-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
More In The Series
More by Beth Vrabel
BOOK REVIEW
by Beth Vrabel
BOOK REVIEW
by Beth Vrabel
BOOK REVIEW
by Beth Vrabel
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by E.B. White
BOOK REVIEW
by E.B. White & illustrated by Maggie Kneen
BOOK REVIEW
by E.B. White illustrated by Fred Marcellino
BOOK REVIEW
by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
by Rob Buyea ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 2010
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Rob Buyea
BOOK REVIEW
by Rob Buyea
BOOK REVIEW
by Rob Buyea
BOOK REVIEW
by Rob Buyea
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.