A witty, heartfelt, and sophisticated story about the consequences of grief.
What happens when an imaginary elementary school friend stays around when you’re in middle school?
As a small child, Zach Belvin began his friendship with an imaginary furry purple friend he names Shovel. Zach shared his imagination and bright blue eyes with his dad. But when Zach was just 6, his father fell ill and died. After this devastating loss, Zach escaped with Shovel into fantasy worlds filled with magic and knights and danger. “These places might’ve seemed scary, but we both knew….Reality could be so much scarier.” With Shovel as a narrator—hilarious, despite the seriousness of the subject matter—readers experience Zach’s loneliness up close. On the first day of middle school, Zach is bullied by some boys—including his former best friend, Ryan. Shovel inspires Zach to fight back, and new student Anni joins in to help, resulting in both of them being placed in detention with Ryan for a week, a situation that leads to social and emotional growth and real-life problem-solving. Even as Zach learns to deal with his grief and Shovel begins to fade away, the purple furball protects the heart of this vulnerable boy with humor and love. Spot art depicts a charmingly appealing Shovel and a racially diverse human cast: Zach and his family present White, Anni is cued as East Asian, and some supporting characters read as Black.
A witty, heartfelt, and sophisticated story about the consequences of grief. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4664-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
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
SEEN & HEARD
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