This first in a new series for preteens and young teens who value friendship and doing the right thing is pretty endearing.
In a story told entirely through text messages, emails, homework assignments, handwritten notes, and diary entries, three longtime besties discover it’s OK to welcome new friends into your life without leaving the old ones behind.
Cecily, Gabrielle, and Prianka have started the second half of their sixth-grade year, and some changes are afoot: Gabby might have to move, there’s a Valentine’s Day dance on the horizon (and dates with boys!), and there’s a new girl at school, Victoria. When Gabby is paired with lonely Victoria for an assignment, Pri and Cecily go on high alert because Victoria seems so desperate to fit in. What if she steals Gabby from them? When someone starts sending Victoria mean texts, the principal intervenes, asking kids and parents to help “eradicate” the sixth-grade “social cruelty” or the Valentine’s dance will be canceled—but the girls’ attempts to include Victoria in their group texts backfire when Pri accidentally sends a rude comment about her to the entire group. Greenwald (Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender, 2017) successfully blends emojis and text to bring the high drama and emotional changes of middle school to life. Everyone appears to be white, except Prianka and the boy she likes, who are both Indian and attend Bal Vihar classes (for Hindu language and culture). A glossary of textspeak is provided.
This first in a new series for preteens and young teens who value friendship and doing the right thing is pretty endearing. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268990-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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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