An unusual, inspiring, and intriguing story.
Young entrepreneurs develop a bug-based business model.
On a school field trip to the zoo, sixth grade vegetarian Hallie Amberose tries a spicy fried cricket and it changes her life. Hallie dives into researching bugs, learning that they’re eaten all over the world, and becomes enamored with possibilities of ending world hunger and saving the planet at the same time. When a business opportunity in the form of a school business pitch project presents itself, Hallie finds herself paired with Jaye Wu—who refuses to do a school project on bugs, let alone eat them. The story is filled with realistic conflicts typical of the middle school years that move the plot forward; Hallie struggles with loneliness while Jaye worries about fitting in. After an unexpected incident, the two forge an unlikely yet believable bond and learn to work together through bug-catching and -cooking experiments. Told through Hallie’s and Jaye’s distinctly alternating perspectives, the book acquaints readers with both headstrong girls and the motivations for their actions. The expressive illustrations peppered throughout complement the descriptive and informative text well, capturing characters’ emotions and personalities. Based on the true story of co-authors and Chirps cricket chips co-founders D’Asaro and Wang, Hallie and Jaye’s bug adventures for the greater good will entrance readers and even encourage them to try eating bugs. Hallie presents White; Jaye is Chinese American.
An unusual, inspiring, and intriguing story. (cricket cookie recipe, interview) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-09617-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
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