Online gaming, family expectations, friendship, and honesty, explored with balance, humor, and insight.
Comedian Ranganathan and co-author Day present a British tween gamer’s journey of self-discovery.
Yasmin Bandara learns, thanks to her best mate, Zane, that she’s a prodigy at GoalPro7, an online soccer simulator. GoalPro7 is electrifying compared to The Monkey House, which “not-very-secretly taught you maths or science while you did something borderline fun” and is the only game her parents allow Yasmin and her 10-year-old brother, Dinesh, to play. Seeing her genius, Zane loans Yasmin his console, and thus her deception of her parents begins. Soon, as a high scorer, Yasmin is invited to compete in esports conventions for both games—taking place in Birmingham, England, on the same day. The tension peaks as Yasmin must decide how to juggle these competing events, weighing commitment to her Monkey Meet-up team against her desire to excel at GoalPro7. When her parents discover her deception, they forbid her to speak to Zane or do any gaming, so Yasmin focuses on studying to fulfill her parents’ expectations that she become a doctor—until Zane makes a discovery that turns Yasmin’s fortunes around. Despite the book's slightly one-dimensional supporting characters, some overly convenient scenarios, and a too-tidy ending, readers will easily relate with the struggles of the multifaceted protagonist, who presents South Asian. The illustrations are enjoyably playful, and the fast pace and conversational tone give the work reluctant reader appeal.
Online gaming, family expectations, friendship, and honesty, explored with balance, humor, and insight. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780241493281
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Puffin/Penguin Random House UK
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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