An uplifting story of friendship, kindness, and new ways of seeing.
A buddy bench brings three disparate kids together.
April Boxler is observant and helpful, but she doesn’t consider herself to be very social. When she has a falling-out with her only friend on the first day of sixth grade at Marshallville Elementary School, April chooses to be a buddy bench volunteer primarily to avoid her classmates. On her second day as volunteer, April spots Joey Byrd, a fourth grader who lies so still on the woodchip playground that he looks like he might be dead. Joey also walks in circles, lies down in the middle of things, and spends all recess alone. When April expresses her concerns about Joey, both her mother and the school counselor are dismissive. As the weeks proceed, April and her buddy bench co-volunteer, fifth grader Parveena—“Veena” for short—come to realize (with the help of the school janitor, Mr. Ulysses) that Joey is in fact making art on the playground. Pearsall’s characters are authentic and well rounded; the story is largely narrated by April in the first person, although the sections titled “JOEYBIRD,” which are accompanied by Jin’s pencil illustrations, give readers a glimpse into Joey’s mind. Almost all the characters, with the exception of Veena, who is from India, seem to be white.
An uplifting story of friendship, kindness, and new ways of seeing. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1739-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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