A captivating and charming adventure sure to please young readers and longtime fans.
The rise and re-education of an unlikely champion by the author of Ella Enchanted.
Blunt and competitive, unpopular Peregrine seeks the approval of her adoptive parents, Lady Klausine and Lord Tove. Raised to believe in Lakti superiority and that the conquered Bamarre are “lucky to be ruled by us,” Peregrine discovers she was born a Bamarre. Reluctant to don the symbolic green tassel of servitude—the only visible difference between the otherwise racially indistinguishable two groups, members of which may be either “pale or dark”—15-year-old Peregrine proves her valor in battle but must flee Tove’s wrath. Relying on her surly maid (and birth sister), Annet, Peregrine seeks refuge with her peasant birth family yet finds she is equally ill-suited to being a cooperative, courteous Bamarre—except for her love of poetry. When the Lakti deem the Bamarre servants/serfs “beings” but not “people” and impose outrageous restrictions, Peregrine seeks freedom for the Bamarre, even if it means fighting monsters both magical…and human. Peregrine’s significant social shortcomings set her apart from the current plethora of martial heroines, and the requisite romance—with a love interest beset by various temporary physical impediments (deafness, blindness)—is wistful but not melodramatic. Levine riffs gently on “Rapunzel” and delivers an arch appraisal of discrimination and bigotry, cloaked in a magical, medieval, vaguely European fairy-tale setting.
A captivating and charming adventure sure to please young readers and longtime fans. (Fantasy. 8-14)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-207466-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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