A quick and steady story for readers who like some substance to their mystery but are not quite ready for the complexity of...
In a New York City apartment building, two lonely children, a pie-baking grandmother and a talking pigeon connect in this gratifying mystery.
Eleven-year-old Nicky has mostly stayed in his room ever since his mother moved to India two years ago, and his “Time-Out Average” has spiked to .750. One floor below, Indian-American Lucy, also 11, a budding forensic scientist and graphologist interested in the study of handwriting, has just moved to the city. Although she’s been unlucky making new friends and gathering more samples for her handwriting journal, she’s reluctant to get to know Nicky. But when the resident talking pigeon intervenes, Lucy soon finds herself putting her sleuthing skills to the test to help Nicky find his missing Grandma Zelda, who never leaves her apartment (only one floor above). Believing “you are what you write,” Lucy offers witty writing rules (e.g., “Life changes lead to letter changes”), which guide the suspense. Simulated writing samples and actual signatures of such notable individuals from history as Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Capone and, of course, John Hancock, fuel Lucy’s forensic applications. When Nicky’s father becomes a prime suspect, his grandmother’s disappearance also becomes a moral dilemma.
A quick and steady story for readers who like some substance to their mystery but are not quite ready for the complexity of Blue Balliett. (author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-3331-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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