A beginning full of potential.
Life gets strange for 12-year-old Charlie Wilde after she moves to a new town and finds a bracelet that grants her animal-based powers.
The cross-country relocation from Chicago to Navarro Junction, Arizona, changes everything for Charlie. Her former stay-at-home biologist dad now teaches at a community college. Her doctor mom works erratic hours as head of the town’s ER, away from home more often than not. Trying out for the soccer team, making new friends (and a potential frenemy), and helping out on a school play also weigh on Charlie. McMann shines best here when exploring Charlie’s efforts to adapt to her new life. For a majority of the first half, the novel moves slowly, which makes all the struggles of being a new girl—as when Charlie wonders if a potential friend would want to hang out—feel like monumental moments. Throughout such scenes, the author peppers in signs about Charlie’s new powers. Once Charlie realizes that her bracelet gives her, for example, the strength of an elephant and the speed of a cheetah, she swings from fearing her newfound abilities to wanting to know more. The development of her powers borders on clichéd (another burning building to test the protagonist?), but the narrative picks up steam during the final pages. A cliffhanger ending promises a much more action-packed sequel. Race and ethnicity of characters other than Charlie are signaled by names and physical characteristics; readers will likely infer that Charlie is white.
A beginning full of potential. (Science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-233714-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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