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FASHION KITTY AND THE B.O.Y.S.

(BALL OF YELLOW STRING)

From the Fashion Kitty series , Vol. 4

Fashion Kitty has plenty of fans and won’t go out of style anytime soon. This installment, however, requires a bit more...

Fashion Kitty has met her share of enemies, but Leon Lambaster the III is the most devious, dastardly of all.

This time, no one is attacking her fashion sense—he's trying to capture Fashion Kitty herself! Leon, a troublemaker at school, starts the Catch Fashion Kitty Club (C.F.K.C. for short). The other members are there because they want to see Fashion Kitty up close, not because they want to harm her. But not Leon. He’s sneaky and full of mischief. However, Leon’s twin brother Lester is the complete opposite. Lester is friends with Kiki Kittie (or Fashion Kitty, when duty calls). When Lester finally learns of Leon’s plan, he does everything he can to stop him. With a larger text-to-illustration ratio than previous works (Fashion Kitty, 2005, etc.), Harper has room to expand. And expand she does. The wacky ball of slimy, yellow string—integral to Fashion Kitty’s capture—needs special gloves and two separate kinds of sprays for it to work. The exciting, yet cluttered, conclusion combines a marshmallow statue, rubber bands from an Eiffel Tower T-shirt and x-ray vision. Along with a few fashion emergencies thrown in.

Fashion Kitty has plenty of fans and won’t go out of style anytime soon. This installment, however, requires a bit more attentiveness than her previous outings.   (creative ideas for crafty kitties; not seen) (Graphic novel. 8-12)

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4231-3654-5

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011

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CHARLOTTE'S WEB

The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...

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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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POCKET BEAR

Poignant and heartwarming.

Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.

Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.

Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025

ISBN: 9781250904362

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025

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