Next book

CHEESIE MACK IS RUNNING LIKE CRAZY!

From the Cheesie Mack series , Vol. 3

Cheesie announces Volume 4 with a tantalizing list of what to expect, so the fun’s not over yet.

Middle school has Cheesie Mack on the run.

List-loving, 11-year-old Ronald “Cheesie” Mack is back for his third outing, and this time, he’s embarking on the grand adventure of sixth grade at a new school…one he must, unfortunately, share with his eighth-grade sister June (Goon). Cheesie decides to run for class president and then decides his best friend (since kindergarten) Georgie should run instead. As they mount the strangest campaign ever, Cheesie continues his epic Point Battle against his sister (a secret game in which they score points for embarrassing or pranking each other). He also discovers track and field, kind of decides that girls are OK to hang out with and does a (sort of) good deed for Goon. Fans of teacher and children’s entertainer Cotler’s chatty, engaging Cheesie titles will be overjoyed with Cheesie’s evolving character and continued good humor and imagination. This stands alone, but events of the first two are referenced; as with the previous volumes, he invites readers to interact on his website. New-to-this-volume illustrator Holgate’s frequent black-and-white illustrations, often labeled by Cheesie, add to the fun.

Cheesie announces Volume 4 with a tantalizing list of what to expect, so the fun’s not over yet. (Fiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: June 25, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-307-97713-7

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 24


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
Next book

CHARLOTTE'S WEB

The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 24


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

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

Next book

TUCK EVERLASTING

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. 

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the first week in August when this takes place to "the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning") help to justify the extravagant early assertion that had the secret about to be revealed been known at the time of the action, the very earth "would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin." (Fantasy. 9-11)

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

Close Quickview