A fast read for budding romance fans, from the Wish series.
At Austen Middle School, seventh grade means the Austen Business Challenge. Latina Clara’s project? Matching up couples for the Hot Chocolate Social.
Clara Martinez does not have time for a boyfriend. She was an outcast at her previous school and cannot believe she is sitting at the “in” table at Austen. When her new friend Emily notices her strong matchmaking skills at the mall, Clara’s ABC project begins to blossom. Happy to be different from the cookie bakers and video game makers, Clara pours herself into the matching business. The ABC is an interesting backdrop against which the social hierarchy of middle school is illustrated. With a cast of familiar middle school characters, divorced parents, and slipping grades—not to mention the plot of Jane Austen’s Emma—Clara’s tale is not unique, but through Clara’s Spanish-sprinkled narration, Meyerhoff gives credibility to these preteens. Readers will rush into the next chapter, determined to uncover if Clara will succeed in pairing up classmates, and they will recognize her own true suitor. Though hers is a squeaky-clean version of romantic relationships in middle school, Meyerhoff nevertheless provides realistic lessons in starting a business. Classmates cheat and try to sabotage each other's projects. Staffing and marketing become real issues. Thankfully, the all-knowing neighbor who watches from the sidelines provides the moral compass to Clara’s quixotic plans.
A fast read for budding romance fans, from the Wish series. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-09922-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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