Not much happens, but it’s all fun and readily recognizable middle school stuff.
Best friends Piper and Olivia are back for a second outing in The Pages Between Us series.
The sixth-graders have a lot to adjust to in middle school. Piper is an indifferent student but a talented videographer. Olivia is dealing with serious crushes and the just as crushing news that the Battle of the Books team might be defunct for lack of interest. The two pair up: Piper makes a first-rate video that’s posted online and stars Olivia, and both reap benefits when the video starts to go viral. The entire tale is related through the (very long) notes the pair exchange in a shared journal, with the occasional addition of illustrations, video scripts, and other addenda to add variety. It’s not easy to see how they have the time to craft such wordy messages. The pair are differentiated enough that each voice is recognizable. They both have their own middle school issues to angst over, Piper that she feels like an unnecessary, unappreciated member of her large family and Olivia that she overthinks everything and gets a bit worked up as a consequence. A popular classmate also weighs in through her blog, which adds a humorous counterpoint to the often earnest journal entries. Piper and Olivia are both depicted with light skin on the cover, blonde Olivia’s a bit lighter than brunette Piper’s.
Not much happens, but it’s all fun and readily recognizable middle school stuff. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-237774-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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