An enjoyable story about the ingenuity and bonds that help a family withstand tough times.
Can winning a cosmetics contest help make the difference for the struggling Zaragoza family?
Griselda “Geez” Zaragoza (it’s short for G.Z.) is entering sixth grade when her life changes drastically. First, her father’s landscaping company goes out of business, then her parents lose their family home, which leads to a move for Geez, big sister Maribel, and Mom to Nana’s with her dad living six hours away to find new work in Los Angeles. Geez faces her family’s new economic reality with an authentic mix of concern, shame, and, ultimately, resourcefulness. Without a new first-day-of-school outfit, she adds ribbon to her plain, “in our price range” sneakers and cuffs her faded jeans so “it almost looks as if that’s the way they’re supposed to fit.” When she learns about an Alma Cosmetics contest from Maribel, she’s determined to sell 500 tubes of lip gloss for a chance to win $5,000, because “it might be enough for that fresh start we’ve all been trying to find.” Torres realistically portrays a Latinx family with true-to-life dynamics, tensions, and worries in an extended clan in which Spanish phrases are spoken naturally. Fans of Kelly Yang’s Front Desk (2018) will enjoy Geez’ entrepreneurial spirit and appreciate another strong-minded young woman of color seeking ways to relieve her family’s financial burden.
An enjoyable story about the ingenuity and bonds that help a family withstand tough times. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-45260-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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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