Eleven-year-old Nick has to go to school smelling like the cloves his new stepmother puts into the shampoo, and that’s just the beginning in this humorous yet true-to-life portrayal of family blending and sixth-grade angst. Nick’s mom died two years ago, and even though he’s always wanted a baby brother, he’s less than thrilled when his Dad marries Miriam and she and nerdy third-grader Dwayne move in. Concurrently, Nick’s trying to figure out his place on the basketball team (teammate Carson Jones seems to have locked up the starting point-guard position) and among his own friends. Not only is Carson a threat on the court, he challenges Nick and even Dwayne to try cigarettes on Halloween and lies to the coach about missing a practice. Caught between his newfound responsibility for Dwayne and his own attempts to fit in despite his anger at his friends, Nick must finesse many familiar scenarios: peer pressure, competing for a spot on the team, and negotiating difficult family relations. Nick is a realistic, likable “tween,” neither too squeaky-clean nor an unregenerate troublemaker. First-novelist Hicks gives Dwayne, Miriam, and Dad enough dimensions to avoid creating the familiar stereotypes of the pesky baby brother, evil stepmother, and out-of-touch Dad, which is refreshing. The turning point for Nick nicely completes the story: Dwayne disappears, and Nick figures out where he is. Especially satisfying is the beginning of a real relationship between the two boys, forged while they’re on their own until Nick’s able to convince Dwayne to come home. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7613-1748-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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