A winner with lots of great moves.
Four sixth graders who belong to a chess club learn about playing the game and also about themselves.
Halima Kasim’s favorite thing is chess. While she cherishes online play and texting moves with her cousin in Somalia, where her extended family lives, Halima wishes there were more “over the board” opportunities in her small town. When her queer best friend, Jemma Knight, who reads white, suggests she create an after-school chess club, Halima is hesitant. She knows the game, but can she be a leader? Summoning her confidence, Halima makes her opening moves: finding an adviser and recruiting Jem as her first member. The club soon gains two new members—white-presenting Parker Finnegan, who wants to stand out from his athletic twin siblings, and artsy Daniel Yang, who’s cued Chinese American and joins after finding a mysterious note in a library book. They’re distinct individuals who learn the value of teamwork; together they build friendships, immerse themselves in the world of chess, and navigate the roller coaster that is middle school. Alternating among all four kids’ perspectives, Donnelly effectively fuses various social themes, like navigating the loss of friendships, dealing with bullying, and being a good sport, with basic information about chess game play and history. Duffy’s grayscale illustrations delineate sections in coordination with clever on-theme names. Diagrams showing chess moves instruct budding players and help readers visualize the action.
A winner with lots of great moves. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328571
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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