Guaranteed to appeal to fans, who will soon be asking when the next one will be out.
Twins Elizabeth and Jessica both covet the lead role in their ballet recital.
The blond, blue-eyed middle schoolers are accomplished dancers in Madame André’s ballet class. But Jessica believes that because of her rocky first day, depicted in Sweet Valley Twins: Best Friends (2022), the teacher overlooks her in favor of Elizabeth. When dancers are chosen for their recital performance of Coppélia, Elizabeth is selected for the lead, Swanilda. The dancers’ work of learning a position or a pirouette is nicely pictured in several scenes. The various skill levels among dancers are convincingly depicted, and a variety of skin colors and hair textures denote a racially diverse group both at ballet and in school. Elizabeth’s single cowlick distinguishes her from Jessica, whose hair is always smoothly styled. Elizabeth’s role as the more thoughtful and kinder of the pair is confirmed here, while Jessica’s ongoing interest in hanging out with the Unicorn club and gossiping about boys will entertain middle-grade readers. Eventually Elizabeth realizes, when Jessica points it out, that Madame André really has not fully seen Jessica’s skills, and she engineers a plan to save the day when disaster strikes. The middle-class suburb, where the girls can ride their bikes or walk to most places, feels safe and, as Elizabeth says, “It’s California—every day is beach weather.”
Guaranteed to appeal to fans, who will soon be asking when the next one will be out. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780593376515
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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