Between the integrated logic and the consciously diverse cast, a wonderful series launch.
A computer coding club brings together a diverse group of girls to solve a mystery.
African-American Lucy is thrilled to finally be a sixth grader and able to join the coding club—she needs to learn to code as quickly as possible, as her goal is to create an app to help her cancer-stricken uncle keep on top of all of his medicines. But things don’t go as expected, and Lucy finds herself working with her former friend, Latina Sophia, intimidating Asian fashionista Maya, and new white kid Erin, and instead of using computers they’re making…sandwiches? Although it’s a valid exercise in computer-instruction logic, Lucy wants to accelerate, and she gets a chance through a mysterious note that, in code syntax, offers a deal: if Lucy follows all instructions from this and subsequent notes, she’ll learn to code. The notes guide her through exercises that illustrate fundamental coding principles in enjoyable ways and also bring her closer to her coding teammates, gaining understanding of and comradery with Maya and Erin as well as repairing the misunderstanding that ended her friendship with Sophia. But what really gets them working together is figuring out who is sending the notes—a mystery they devise a simple computer program to solve. The computer elements serve the story rather than the other way around, resulting in a substantive, amusing tale.
Between the integrated logic and the consciously diverse cast, a wonderful series launch. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54251-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message.
Two boys equally blessed with both talent and ego vie for supremacy in their school’s annual “creative storytelling competition.”
J is “by far the best artist in the entire fifth grade”; K has “become known as the best writer in the entire fifth grade.” Naturally, each one is determined to crush it in The Contest, and each decides an illustrated story is the way to go. The competitive boys try to undermine one another by passing along fake tips for success, each hoping to destroy his opponent’s story. K advises J to “write what you DON’T know” and to use sixth-person narration. “J’s Secrets to Drawing Really Good” are just as catastrophic and include drawing with your nondominant hand and inserting mistakes to keep readers engaged. Creative hijinks ensue. Craft and Alexander have become known on social media for the jocular trash talk they heap on each other; J and K are their fictional child avatars. As an internet bit doled out in small doses, their frenemy-ship is amusing; as a sustained story about storytelling, it’s thin on both character and plot development. Authorial interjections exhort readers to look up 75-cent vocabulary, often used in barbs directed at each other; the latter feel like in-jokes more than playful attempts to engage young readers. Kids may enjoy spotting references to popular children’s authors among the characters’ names, and budding authors and illustrators will benefit from the advice. J and K are both Black; their classmates and teachers are racially diverse.
An insubstantial story that offers a prosocial message. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780316582681
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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