Sweet but heavy on lessons learned.
For a journal assignment, all the girls in the Daring Dreamers Club have chosen a Disney princess with whom they feel a connection.
In this second entry in the series, Piper has selected Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, because they both have several obstacles to overcome. She is dyslexic, has difficulties reading and writing, and now has trouble solving math word problems. Her greatest joy is experimenting with food using the scientific method to concoct her recipes. She has been selected to participate in a reality TV show that challenges child chefs and offers a large monetary prize to the winner. She learns that obstacles need not be faced alone and that she has the support of her family and her friends in the club. Piper’s tale is interspersed with her journal entries and those of the other club members, sharing their thoughts about their own challenges. Piper is Jewish, conveyed in a reference to Passover, Mariana is Latina, Zahra is Muslim, and Ruby is white, a child of divorce. Milla is African-American and the heroine of the previous series entry. Although the girls have distinct and interesting personalities, the ethnic and racial diversity feels skin-deep; interestingly, not one girl chooses to focus on a princess that shares her race or ethnicity. Soderberg employs a compassionate, light, and humorous tone, allowing readers to root wholeheartedly for Piper, but the princess connection tries too hard.
Sweet but heavy on lessons learned. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7364-3944-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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