A helpful novel/manual with a role to play in the classroom and therapy office.
A middle schooler struggles with time management and executive functioning skills.
In Hudon’s debut graphic novel, time is always slipping away from Kodi, the main character. He wakes up on the first day of middle school intent on doing everything right and not being the “loser” he was last year. But extra time spent in bed means he forgets half his things, misses the bus, and leaves a mess in his home that angers his working single mother. Every day in his week is like this; he even loses track of time the night before an important report is due and falls asleep at the kitchen table trying to finish it. It isn’t until Kodi hears a snippet about something called “the Time Snatcher” in class that he starts to identify his problem and seek help from the school’s speech-language pathologist, Mrs. Norton (“The Time Snatcher wants to take your time by distracting you”). Learning the skills that he needs to reorganize his life isn’t easy, and it takes most of the school year for Kodi to find what works for him. The battle is tough, but Mrs. Norton and Kodi’s classmate Juan help him to fight and finally defeat the Time Snatcher once and for all. Their methods serve not only to help Kodi, but also ostensibly to aid the book’s audience, too, as this novel reads as a thinly veiled guide to time management skills. Its format makes it highly accessible for a variety of ages and reading abilities, though the story does come off as somewhat one-dimensional. Szucs’ illustrations, which portray a diverse cast, are plain but practical. A standout moment is the brain-as-orchestra metaphor that describes executive functioning skills. The backmatter includes worksheets for readers to use to tackle their own Time Snatchers. This work is a useful tool that may find its place in the collections of educators and psychologists rather than on recreational reading shelves.
A helpful novel/manual with a role to play in the classroom and therapy office.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2022
ISBN: 9781580412926
Page Count: 108
Publisher: ASHA Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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