With its simplistic plotting and cardboard characterization, this series opener is less than heavenly.
Mean girls and magic at a school for aspiring guardian angels.
Third-grader Ella is a member of the new class at Guardian Angel Academy, where, through good deeds, young angels earn stamps on their halo cards. The stamps translate to color-changing halos (rather like karate belts), which culminate in the diamond halo that means an angel is ready to be a guardian angel. The students can lose stamps too, for bad behavior. Outgoing Ella—who quickly becomes close with her three dorm-mates—has to suppress her drive for adventure and keep her temper under lock. She is challenged by one-dimensional, priggish mean-girl Primrose, who manipulates Ella’s short fuse, baiting her into misbehavior. When Ella learns that her friend Tilly is miserable from homesickness, she sneaks away from the school to an off-limits location to collect a magical remembering flower to cheer her pal up. A predictable kerfuffle ensues. The uniformly female angels are easiest to tell apart by hairstyle, especially in the attractive, cherubic black-and-white illustrations; though one looks to have light-brown skin on the cover, in the interior illustrations they all appear to be white. The secular angels use magic instead of religious mythology.
With its simplistic plotting and cardboard characterization, this series opener is less than heavenly. (Fantasy. 6-9)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5798-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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