Atmospheric and gothic in a bighearted way.
After The Monsters of Rookhaven (2021), a special event reveals the Family’s vulnerabilities to outside threats.
Every hundred years, the nonhuman Family gathers at a sanctuary house for the Great Configuration. Mirabelle’s first Configuration will be at Rookhaven. With all of the eerie beings coming and going, a mysterious foe takes the opportunity to send in Billy, under threat to his sister’s life, on a mission to obtain something from Rookhaven. Billy, Mirabelle learns, is like her—of mixed parentage, half-Family and half-human. From the extended Family, Mirabelle learns that the two of them are Misbegotten, outcasts—from both sides of their heritage—who are discriminated against outside Rookhaven. Woven into the intrigue of what the new threat’s goal is, there are meditations on family, mortality, and forgiveness. The young protagonists face mortal dangers not so much toward themselves as toward their loved ones; the pacing picks up once the threats move beyond being theoretical and emotional to the point when the plot against Rookhaven is set into irreversible motion. The heroes, who strive to understand and love one another, humanize even the most monstrous among them, finding beauty, tragedy, and cautionary tales. Having added to both the expanded mythos and the web of character relationships in surprising twists, this story leaves plenty of room for more entries set in its charming, magical world. Characters, when human (or human-shaped), default to White. Final art not seen.
Atmospheric and gothic in a bighearted way. (Fantasy. 8-14)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-62396-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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