An entertaining—but not particularly original—addition to the perennially relevant genre.
Sludgepuggle! Pottymouth and Stoopid take on relentless bullies, terrible teachers, and a dastardly Ex-Dad.
Twelve-year-olds Michael and David have been best friends—and the objects of widespread ridicule—since preschool. Now they’re in seventh grade, and things are still pretty much the same. Everyone still calls David “Stoopid,” because he once accidentally spilled some paint, and Michael “Pottymouth,” because he responds with creative expletives when provoked (“Rrrrrggghhh, hicklesnicklepox! David isn’t stupid, you flufferknuckles!”). David’s divorced parents and Michael’s churlish foster parents are no help, and when a new TV show appears on the Cartoon Factory network, things take a turn…for the worse. As with Patterson and Grabenstein’s previous collaborations, the combination of short chapters and comical illustrations (here courtesy of Gilpin) targets fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. This iteration aims, not quite successfully in its broad strokes, to reflect a slightly more diverse crowd—the vast majority of primary characters are white, but Michael is black, and the story also touches on children’s experiences with divorced parents, (bad) foster parents, and families with lower incomes. Readers will be amused by Pottymouth and Stoopid’s shenanigans, bolstered occasionally by the brainy Anna Britannica (chubby and white and another victim of the school’s charismatic bully), but the generally formulaic tale delivers few truly funny or memorable moments.
An entertaining—but not particularly original—addition to the perennially relevant genre. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-34963-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
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