Emotionally astute and sure to inspire readers to embrace dancing to their own beat.
Milo thinks he can’t dance—in fact, he’s convinced that he’s cursed.
In this third installment in Sax’s charming Brinkley Yearbooks graphic novel series, Mexican American Milo Castillo is vexed by a self-induced hex: Every time he dances, disaster follows. After mortifying experiences at a friend’s bar mitzvah and a group dance lesson, Milo is utterly dejected when he hears about the upcoming Snowball Soiree. Luckily, Abue, his beloved abuela, has moved into the Castillo home. Even though she’s been warned against driving, Abue whisks Milo and his friends off to experience live Tejano music, which he enjoys both musically and aesthetically. The experience leaves him with a stronger connection to his heritage as well as more self-confidence in his dancing—but Milo feels guilty for lying to his parents about Abue’s driving and conflicted about where to draw the line when trying to please others. When Abue’s failing eyesight catches up with her clandestine drives, Milo must make a hard choice. This latest entry maintains the high standards of Sax’s series. Milo is wholly relatable and accessible, adroitly portraying the ups and downs of adolescence. Sposto’s vibrantly alluring colors and Sax’s gift for highlighting facial expressions and emotions imbue Milo’s journey of self-acceptance and confidence with deeper levels of nuance that are certain to resonate with readers long after the last page is turned.
Emotionally astute and sure to inspire readers to embrace dancing to their own beat. (author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780593306963
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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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