Thrilling, heartwarming adventures highlight commonalities that span centuries.
A boy in China in 731 C.E. and a girl in New York in 1931 face separate hardships and adventures but are connected by common threads.
Eleven-year-old Han Yu lives a simple life in Chang’An. He’s seen as unusual because of the various animals that are drawn to him—even a tiger, which has earned him the nickname “Tiger Boy.” But Han Yu enjoys ordinary activities, like making steamed buns to sell with his father at the busy market. Eleven-year-old Luli Lee has a modest and happy Depression-era existence in New York City’s Chinatown. She’s been helping her immigrant parents run their restaurant in the building they’re saving up to buy. But disaster strikes both children’s lives: Members of Han Yu’s family contract a mysterious, deadly respiratory illness, and Luli’s family business and home are at risk of foreclosure. Both young people summon their courage, creativity, and determination as they go on adventures to help their families. As two exciting parallel stories of family, friendship, and community unfold, they bravely confront a variety of challenges, supported by loyal animal companions. While their storylines are distinct, they’re connected through cultural elements that reverberate through their historical eras. The alternating third-person chapters following Han Yu’s and Luli’s story arcs are strongly paced and highly suspenseful. Detailed descriptions make this a vibrant love letter to Chinese culture, food, history, poetry, and art. Final art not seen.
Thrilling, heartwarming adventures highlight commonalities that span centuries. (maps, author’s note, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780063284432
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Allida/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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