Another hilarious and sincere look at a middle schooler’s search for her squad.
Christina and her friends are back, this time trying out for the ninth grade cheerleading squad.
It’s 1994 in small-town Texas, and Christina’s second semester of eighth grade is almost perfect. Her classes are interesting, her friends are great, and she’s looking forward to a fun art project, but she still longs to be a cheerleader. Christina and her two best friends, Megan and Leanne, learn all the routines and dream of what being cheerleaders would mean. When three spots for the ninth grade squad open up, a more confident Christina and her friends go through the intense tryouts again. But Christina’s life falls apart when she overhears her parents talking about divorce. Even though she’s going through a taxing time, she puts on a smile and pushes on with cheer, hoping to make her life movie-perfect. While cheerleading is a major component of Soontornvat’s funny, relatable, stand-alone graphic memoir companion to The Tryout (2022), the story also explores divorce, friend drama, a first crush, racism, and microaggressions. As someone who’s Thai and white and feels like she doesn’t fully belong to any one community, Christina continues to struggle with identity, especially after her parents’ split. Pranks and jokes add levity to this emotional story. Cacao’s bright, sharply rendered illustrations highlight the characters’ expressions and add context about the ’90s and the various cultural elements.
Another hilarious and sincere look at a middle schooler’s search for her squad. (author’s note, photos) (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781338741322
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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SEEN & HEARD
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