Gentle, inventive, and delightfully magical.
In this latest series installment, the magical bracelet finds its way to Lucy Usathorn.
Ten-year-old Lucy’s parents have been divorced since she was 3, and Lucy splits her time between her parents. She’s looking forward to her field trip to the Fort Worth Natural History Museum, where her dad works. But the day quickly turns sour. Strict Ms. Brock, the school librarian and her dad’s girlfriend, is chaperoning the trip, a classmate vomits on Lucy’s new sneakers, and Lucy’s pushiness alienates her best friend, Olive. Just when things can’t get any worse, Lucy’s father proposes to Ms. Brock, and Lucy runs off crying. At her mother’s house, Lucy discovers a strange package containing a bracelet. She connects via text with the bracelet’s previous owners (series fans will be familiar with their stories), who explain that this is no ordinary piece of jewelry but warn her to be careful what she wishes for. Lucy decides to use the bracelet to redo her terrible day...and prevent the proposal. Told in the form of a letter from Lucy to an unseen girl named Maya (the bracelet's next recipient), this is a lighthearted yet poignant tale. Once again, the fantastical premise is used to wonderful effect—as Lucy relives her day, she eventually learns a much-needed lesson. Lucy and her father are Thai, while Ms. Brock appears to be light-skinned in Vee’s artwork.
Gentle, inventive, and delightfully magical. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781338628319
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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