Patronizing depictions of cognitive disability render this portrait of brotherly love disappointingly uneven.
Winner of the Dutch Silver Pen Award, this import examines the bond between a boy and his disabled brother.
Eleven-year-old Josh’s older brother, Jadran—affectionately nicknamed Giant—is 16. But to their mother, Jadran, whose unspecified cognitive disability includes an exceptionally vivid memory and violent outbursts, is Josh’s little brother; Josh is Jadran’s “guardian angel”—which gets harder when their mother’s partner, Murad, and his daughter, Yasmin, move in. Josh, however, is remarkably accepting; the brothers are inseparable. But when Jadran’s impatient attempt to teach an injured crane to fly inadvertently breaks Josh’s leg, requiring Josh to use a wheelchair, Jadran must reside full-time at his special school. Vowing to stay together, Jadran and Josh embark on a daring road trip to release the crane, and Josh learns that Jadran understands more than anyone realized—including the circumstances of their father’s departure. In a thought-provoking role reversal, Jadran becomes a caregiver, and Josh is treated as if he “could no longer answer for [himself].” Unfortunately, the depiction of a disabled character as an eternal child—a pernicious stereotype—prevails here. Despite Jadran’s unique experiences and growing self-assertion, Josh still views him as his little brother at heart; Jadran himself is a heartstrings-yanking plot device. Van der Linden’s black-and-white double-page illustrations introduce each of the book’s multiple parts. Though characters’ races default to white, naming conventions cue Murad and Yasmin as Middle Eastern.
Patronizing depictions of cognitive disability render this portrait of brotherly love disappointingly uneven. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64614-008-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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