A spooky cautionary tale about the toll of unhealthy relationships and an ode to the power of true friendship.
Sadie Rivera can’t recall a time when she wasn’t haunted by the jealous ghost who threatens those she loves.
In the wake of the sudden death of Anna, her best—and only—friend in Arizona, Sadie is reluctant to forge new relationships, fearing that the ghost will hurt them like she did Anna. Raised by her pale-skinned single dad after her Mexican mom left the family, Sadie feels like she lives “in a different world than any other seventh grader,” and she withdraws “into her cloud of fog and numbness” to cope with her loneliness. That is, until she meets Charlotte and Mal, two polar-opposite girls at her new school in Idaho who both take an interest in befriending her. Strangely, the ghost doesn’t make an appearance; Mal, however, makes it clear that being her best friend means being her only friend. She isolates Sadie from Charlotte while taking advantage of her guilt and grief to push her to do things she’s uncomfortable with, such as executing cruel pranks that escalate. Mejia deftly navigates the pitfalls, pressures, and pleasures of girlhood during the middle school years. Sadie deals with tough issues faced by many young people, including grief, parental abandonment, self-esteem struggles, and toxic friendships, using horror elements as metaphors for anxiety and depression.
A spooky cautionary tale about the toll of unhealthy relationships and an ode to the power of true friendship. (Paranormal. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593647035
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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