A moving and layered story of reflection and connection.
Suspended from school, seventh graders Eb and Flow find peace even as life doesn’t make it easy for them.
Ebony’s on her eighth suspension from Brookside Junior High, and 10 days at home in her strict grandmother’s crowded house isn’t exactly where she wants to be, but with both parents all but out of the picture, it’s the only option. De’Kari goes by Flow, a nickname from his rapper father, but he wants to forge his own path. Yet hitting Eb over her dirtying his new sneakers makes him reflect during his 10 restless days at home on the type of person he wants to be—and on memories of his dad hitting his mom. In parallel first-person verse narration, the two Black tweens reveal that they have a lot in common, including struggling with fathers away in the military. Throughout their suspensions, they unknowingly stay so close to each other that they peacefully pass one another by during a snowstorm. Breadcrumbs—sometimes heartbreaking, always poetic—scattered throughout the story gradually offer readers a path toward what really happened in the now-viral fight between the two, and as tensions escalate and extended families get involved along Brookside crew lines, the future is especially murky. A shared nightmare of the worst-case scenario puts a lot into perspective for Eb and Flow, returning optimism to the negotiating table and potentially pointing toward reconciliation.
A moving and layered story of reflection and connection. (Verse novel. 8-13)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-42913-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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