A beautiful and sincere story of death, healing, and family.
Evie Walman does not have, nor does she want, any friends.
A lot of the kids in her class think it’s creepy that her parents own a funeral home. It’s certainly not a normal summer job for a rising eighth grader, but Evie takes her position as junior funeral director very seriously. And despite what anyone may think, she is equally as serious about not making any friends—that just leads to getting hurt. When she meets Oren Katzman after the tragic deaths of his parents, she is eager to help him through his grief during the arduous funeral process, but certainly not as his friend. At first this seems easy for Evie, especially since Oren hasn’t spoken since the accident, but when her parents invite him to help out at the funeral home as well, the two can no longer avoid their growing (if mostly silent) friendship. This middle-grade novel is both a celebration of life and a peaceful acknowledgement of the harsh realities of death. It is a heartfelt and expertly written tale of loss, family, and friendship that will have readers blinking back their tears as they follow Evie and Oren as they navigate their way through their new companionship. Characters are White and Jewish.
A beautiful and sincere story of death, healing, and family. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4598-2707-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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