A sweet, authentic Indian slice of middle-grade life.
Basanta, who splits her time between serving a rich family in her rural Indian town and playing with children less advantaged than she, gives an episodic account of several weeks of her life.
The prologue introduces Basanta’s lack of enthusiasm for her deceased grandmother’s idea that “A song from the heart is more golden than a nicely wrapped gift.” Throughout the story, Basanta grapples with feelings of envy for people in better circumstances, as well as annoyance at her mother’s generous nature. Yet, more than once, she herself shows compassion and even altruism. Basanta is a believable character whose emotions and actions reflect early adolescence in any culture. She is also clearly different from most of her Western counterparts: illiterate, with no formal education, and prone to obsessively arranging doll weddings. Her language is sprinkled with colorful, insightful similes. Unsurprisingly, Basanta’s narration is dotted with Hindi words (often distractingly printed in italic type) and full of character names unfamiliar to readers not of the culture (with the doubtlessly unintentional exception of naughty Paki). It can be difficult to keep track of the many characters, and the plots and subplots are dizzying. However, Basanta’s honest and often humorous account of her own foibles and near heroics will keep readers entertained while they think about wealth distinctions and absorb new information from an Indian-American author.
A sweet, authentic Indian slice of middle-grade life. (glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56145-904-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.
Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”
J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780316582681
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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