An emotional tale of a family’s grief and healing, full of courage and hope.
Twelve-year-old Adnan Zakir is looking forward to going to Florida to see cousins and participate in a table-tennis competition when tragedy strikes, changing his family forever.
Adnan lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with Abu, Amma (who is pregnant), 13-year-old sister Aaliyah, and 2-year-old brother Riz. He dreams of playing table tennis professionally or maybe becoming a pilot. When Adnan qualifies for the Ultimate Table Tennis Championship Tournament taking place in Orlando over Eid weekend, his family decides to make it a vacation with extended family. What was supposed to be a fun-filled trip turns tragic when Riz drowns in the pool of their rented house. Adnan blames himself: “If I hadn’t gone to Florida to play table tennis, / Riz would still be here.” But with support and guidance from his parents, friends, and table tennis coach, he starts to accept that he is not at fault. Observing his mother channel her grief into educating others about water safety, Adnan finds the courage to return to what he loves. In this verse novel, Faruqi depicts strong community bonds, seamlessly interweaving Adnan’s Pakistani Muslim identity. The story includes details about the family’s time at the masjid (where Adnan also discovered his love for table tennis), Eid rituals, Riz’s funeral, and more. An author’s note discusses a real-life experience that inspired this story.
An emotional tale of a family’s grief and healing, full of courage and hope. (swimming resources, ABCs of water safety, recipe, glossary) (Verse fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063284944
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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