A mild and appealing historical tale with relevance to current events, as the author points out in her note.
Cory Woodford is eager to prove his bravery, just like his grandpa, a World War I hero, and his dad, serving in World War II.
He drags his mates, Aidan and Sawyer, on a mission to prove that their neighbor Ziegler is a Nazi spy: he's German, after all. Aidan and Sawyer are not convinced but, tired of Cory's boasts, go along primarily to tease Cory about his failures. They almost entirely ostracize Cory when he befriends a girl, Anne. Cory is sure he'd succeed at his task if only he had a superhero's powers. The tension and rivalry among the boys is compounded by stereotypes and prejudice that intensify as the war hits closer to home. Cory's dad dies, and Aidan's brother becomes a conscientious objector. The final straw: Anne is German! Emotions are raw. Cory has some revelatory talks with his mother and must reconsider whether mettle is inherited. He also does some soul-searching through his own comic-book-strip creation and alter ego, Warrior's Kid, who has a parallel storyline. The two stories play off each other, the graphic panels punctuating Cory’s ingenuous narration.
A mild and appealing historical tale with relevance to current events, as the author points out in her note. (bibliography, further resources.) (Historical fiction/graphic hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62979-305-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
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