Not every mystery is resolved, but readers will likely still be pleased with the outcome.
Twelve-year-old Minna Treat makes a new friend and learns something new about an old one as she grapples with the expectations of family and community in Gilbreth, a small New York town dedicated to the perpetuation of traditional crafts.
Minna’s first-person narration is wry and articulate. Raised by her sole known relative, her uncle, after the untimely deaths of her mother and grandparents, Minna has read far more than her share of parenting books. Their droll titles and humorously pat advice are sprinkled throughout; excerpts from a history of the town head each chapter and provide additional context. With an important contest looming, questions about the identity of her unknown father beginning to feel more urgent, her uncle’s (mostly hidden) anxiety about their finances, and the recent election of a mayor intent on modernization and improvements, Minna has plenty to ponder. The addition of mysterious messages found in glass bottles, the mayor’s awkward daughter, and Minna’s best friend’s suddenly secretive behavior gives readers lots to think about too as they follow Minna’s adventures in the month preceding the annual Autumnfest. Lawson creates an engaging cast of characters, most apparently white, and keeps the tone light and the plot moving so that Minna’s adolescent angst is entertaining rather than distressing.
Not every mystery is resolved, but readers will likely still be pleased with the outcome. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4842-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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