A heartfelt, if slightly uneven, portrayal of managing challenges in early adolescence.
Eleven-year-old Natalie Sellek, nicknamed “Nutty” for her fondness for Nutella, faces both an upcoming bat mitzvah and serious upheaval in her suburban Australian life.
Natalie’s family is struggling financially, and she’s been growing apart from her one-time best friend, Avi Gluck. Natalie shares interests (Harry Styles, The Real Housewives) with other girls at her private Jewish school, and she’s unsure how to handle her classmates’ bullying responses to Avi’s gender nonconformity, especially when they come from new friend and queen bee, Shayna. Natalie’s favorite aunt, Sarah, who’s queer, is grappling with depression, and Bubi, her grandmother (a caustic Holocaust survivor), is distressed about moving to an assisted living facility. Debut author Sussman resolves most of Natalie’s challenges rosily, though not without moments of anxiety for the earnest protagonist, including moving house because her parents can’t afford the mortgage, scaling back her bat mitzvah celebrations, and anticipating attending public school. A central relationship conflict is solved too easily, in a way that feels tied to underdeveloped characterization. Bubi stands out for her resistance to the book’s overall optimism: The complex expressions of her trauma and her discontented personality (devoted but never warm) provide an astute portrait of a vanishing demographic. Most characters are Jewish and present white; Avi is biracial (her father is implied white, and her mother, who converted to Judaism, is Chinese Australian).
A heartfelt, if slightly uneven, portrayal of managing challenges in early adolescence. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781761600517
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
