A refreshing depiction of drama turned positive, this series opener is perfect for young entrepreneurs.
Can Resa Lopez learn to balance leadership and teamwork in time to run a successful business that wins the school contest?
When Resa finds out that the sixth-grade trip is to Adventure Central and that the team whose lemonade stand raises the most money for the trip gets QuickTix—wait-free access to all the thrilling rides—she is beyond excited. She and her best friend, Didi Singh, are happy to be on the same team, but Resa quickly judges their other team members wanting: unreliable fashionista Harriet Nguyen and quiet Amelia Grant, the new girl. Resa assumes that Amelia is “stuck-up” because she doesn’t speak much, but Amelia finds her voice when Resa insists on bossing everyone around. Didi normally tries to smooth things over on Resa’s behalf, but even she gets fed up with Resa’s attitude. The team’s setbacks and failures are almost unbearable, but the chuckleworthy snark will keep readers going. The team members learn not only about listening to each other, using their strengths, and stepping out of their comfort zones, but also about important business skills such as marketing and location, which are expounded upon in an endnote. Resa makes for a daringly flawed early-middle-grade protagonist, with room for growth that’s realized satisfyingly. Resa (Teresa) is Afro-Latina, Didi (Indira) is Indian, Amelia is white, and Harriet is Asian.
A refreshing depiction of drama turned positive, this series opener is perfect for young entrepreneurs. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18040-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Imprint
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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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