A fun, interactive guide to forging your own path in middle school.
Talia Zargari’s notebook helps her deal with the new challenges of sixth grade.
A few weeks into the school year, Dash, Talia’s neighbor and longtime best friend, tells her they can’t be friends anymore. Desperate to fit in, Dash succumbs to peer pressure and teasing from other boys. Hoping to be able to stay close to Dash through their shared love of math, Talia, whose mom is a computer programmer, is excited to join him on the mathlete team. As the only girl, Talia experiences discrimination from the team captain, however, so she decides to start a new, girls-only team. The Mathlete Mermaids show the boys’ team up by winning their first competition. But there is still work to be done in including girls in STEM, and the Mermaids must prove themselves in ways boys don’t. The book shows with authenticity how Talia has to manage complex feelings around growing up, recognizing her own mistakes, and making room for others, particularly when teammate Leticia, a skilled leader, steps in as Mermaids team captain. Talia’s love of code-breaking and scavenger hunts is incorporated through fun puzzles for readers to solve. Fans of Moss’ Amelia’s Notebooks series will feel at home with the engagingly illustrated text and tips for navigating social situations. Talia has tan skin and curly black hair; Dash reads Black, and background characters are diverse in appearance.
A fun, interactive guide to forging your own path in middle school. (author’s note) (Illustrated fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1802-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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