Come for the fun, magical premise; stay for the hopeful, beautiful story.
A sixth grader swaps places with a princess from the world she created.
Fantasy lover Auden “Denny” Greene has been writing about fairy-tale world Sorrowfeld with best friend Runa Rossi for years. But lately, Runa has been less interested in adding to their journal, The Tale of Dragons True, and more focused on fitting in with the mean, popular girls; her latest worldbuilding contribution is the rule that at 12, “a true princess is not a child anymore.” After Denny and Runa’s disastrous shared 12th birthday party, Denny looks into a mysterious mirror adorned with dragons—her present from Runa—and suddenly she’s in Sorrowfeld, where she’s now Princess Auden. In the real princess’ viewpoint chapters, she’s anxious about turning 12 and clueless about how to fulfill her duty to stop the threatening dragons. Trading lives and ending up in Denny’s world initially offers her a reprieve, but she’s ill-equipped to handle modern preteen social dynamics. Both girls’ storylines explore childhood warring with heavy pressures—the dragons plaguing Sorrowfeld and Denny’s mother’s struggles with alcoholism. Even antagonistic characters are given nuance. Both girls find their way through their problems with courage, compassion, and creativity. The parallels between the story arcs shine, lending authenticity even to the most fantastical elements and adding emotional weight as the girls, who are cued white, grapple with the destructive aspects of grief and expectations. The ending emphasizes heart and understanding.
Come for the fun, magical premise; stay for the hopeful, beautiful story. (Fantasy. 8-13)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780063348141
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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