On the bright side, maybe things will get better for Chloe and her readers in the next installment.
Determined to find new best friends in her new school, fifth-grader Chloe Silver makes mistakes, but her essential kindness helps her out.
Torn between the overtures of popular, pale-skinned mean-girl Monroe Reeser and the company of oddball science-table mates Lucy Tanaka and Theo Barnes, Chloe struggles to find a balance. She'd love to join a club, and Monroe offers the "It Girls," while Lucy and Theo propose "The Kindness Club," named for their science project to raise serotonin levels by doing acts of kindness. (Their special focus is Lucy's cranky neighbor, Mrs. Gallagher). Chloe also faces changes in her family. Now she sees her father only on Wednesday nights and alternating weekends, and she has to share that time with his new girlfriend and her accomplished daughter. Though naturally a positive thinker, Chloe is having a hard time. Readers may, too, as they watch her get sucked into a series of deceptions and absorb the lessons that seem to propel this well-meant series opener. As depicted on the cover, Lucy is Asian while Chloe and Theo are white. The first-person narrative is awkward in places, with unconvincing dialogue and incidents that don’t propel the story. Both Mrs. Gallagher and Chloe change their ways surprisingly suddenly.
On the bright side, maybe things will get better for Chloe and her readers in the next installment. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68119-091-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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