A relatable novel that will encourage readers to fight for their rights.
A seventh grade girl learns to speak up for equity, community, and freedom of expression.
Lotus Bloom is not your typical tween: She wears vintage ’70s clothes, proudly rocks an Afro, and is a gifted violinist. Music is her escape, and she needs it more than ever between her parents’ divorce, her father’s relocation to Paris, a mother who doesn’t understand her, and a strained relationship with her best friend, Rebel Mitchell. Atlantis School of the Arts, Lotus’ new magnet school, allows her to focus on her passion, but Rebel is staying behind in a regular public school. When Lotus is made first-chair violin, she catches the attention of Adolpho Cortez, a ninth grade bully who believes the honor is rightfully his. Having learned to tamp down her feelings, Lotus ignores him despite her friends’ urging her to take action. But when a school administrator cites her Afro as a dress-code violation, Lotus is done with keeping quiet. Ignoring her Granny’s pessimism and her mother’s admonition not to make waves, she speaks up for herself and also joins Rebel’s protest against Miami-Dade County’s inequitable funding of schools in their historically Black neighborhood. Winston employs rich descriptions through Lotus’ first-person narration, conveying her love of music. The text brings themes of racism and protest to the forefront, making it a solid conversation starter. Lotus and Rebel are Black; the rest of the cast is broadly diverse.
A relatable novel that will encourage readers to fight for their rights. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0846-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways.
Devotion permeates this tale of a small dog who’s swept up in a peasants’ revolt against a greedy king.
Inflamed with righteousness in the wake of yet another tax hike, 12-year-old Tom has defied his parents to slip away and join the revolutionary Reds. Stoutly declaring that he’s a good dog, 5-year-old Rebel chases after him to bring his beloved boy back—and discovers a wide new world beyond the farm, fraught with dangers but also rich in animal friends offering help and advice. Just as beguiling as the furry narrator’s dog’s-eye view of events are his ongoing arguments with Jaxon, a gruff feral hound he meets along the way, who urges him to find his wild inner True Dog. Jaxon’s refusal to be bound by emotional attachments ultimately clashes with Rebel’s big, uncomplicated heart. Following a brush with death, Rebel encounters a mystical Companion, who offers him glimpses of dog heaven; when the climactic battle arrives, Rebel declares, “I get to decide what I do with my one and only life. And if I use it for anything, I’m going to use it for love.” The author brings the odyssey to a satisfactory conclusion with one last, pure affirmation of love. In this story set in an alternate Britain reminiscent of its 17th-century Civil War, Rebel distinguishes humans in the cast by their voices, smell, and dress.
Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781536246797
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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