A fun mystery with a strong sense of place and plenty of surprises.
In this series opener based on a popular podcast, 12-year-old Opal Watson loves solving mysteries—she writes down her observations and collects clues in her detective notebook.
Opal, who’s Black, has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa; she occasionally uses the cane she’s named “Pinkerton” to help her navigate in poor light conditions. On her way home to Chicago from New Orleans, where she stayed with her beloved grandmother and attended summer camp, Opal learns from her friend Madison Ling about mysterious noises coming from their apartment building, the Crescent, where Opal’s dad is the manager. Opal works with Madison and Frank Goode, her cousin and best friend, to get to the bottom of the mystery—which quickly grows bigger than any of them could have expected and even threatens the existence of the Crescent. At the same time, Opal wrestles with being partnered for a big project on the Great Migration with Ivy Atkinson, a new girl at school, after the two get off on the wrong foot at the seventh grade orientation event. The story moves at a steady pace, incorporating historical information into the many twists and turns as Opal races against the clock in a search for the truth. The book beautifully highlights the charms of the Chicago backdrop through the descriptions provided by Opal and other characters.
A fun mystery with a strong sense of place and plenty of surprises. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063326491
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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