No middle schooler wants to face a month at summer enrichment camp, but many will enjoy watching Charlie Joe work harder...
Charlie Joe Jackson learns that “being a perfect student is just really, really hard.”
Charlie Joe’s parents mean business: He must earn all A’s (he negotiates for one B) in his last quarter of school or he’s headed to Camp Rituhbukee for summer school. Charlie Joe has spent so much time avoiding schoolwork and causing problems that he now has to spend any free time earning extra credit. Luckily, he has great friends who are willing to help him learn to be a student. He still needs help, so he asks his art, drama and PE teachers for some extra credit. While it’s clear no one thinks Charlie Joe has what it takes, these three teachers come up with inventive ways to assist. In art, he poses for the art students (and meets future girlfriend Zoe). In drama, he uses his schmoozing abilities to land the lead role in the school musical. And in PE, he joins student government. But things do not always turn out as planned. Snappy, sarcastic middle-school humor lifts this overlong book, and the spot drawings and occasional very short pithy paragraphs are a pleasant surprise.
No middle schooler wants to face a month at summer enrichment camp, but many will enjoy watching Charlie Joe work harder than he has ever worked before to avoid it…even if he fails. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59643-692-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A warm bundle of holiday cheer.
In a funny, feel-good tale, 12-year-old twins separated at birth meet by chance and try to pull off a family switch during the December holidays.
The girls, who are cued white, agree that it would be a delicious prank, but each has a personal motive, too: Aviva Davis, who was adopted by a culturally Jewish mom and a Black dad who was raised Christian, wonders what it’s like to celebrate Christmas. Budding author Holly Martin, who was adopted by a white-presenting single mom, sees a golden opportunity to gather experiences for a school writing assignment about facing her fears. In a plot as sweet as a Hanukkah jelly doughnut and twisty as a Christmas cinnamon roll, the pair just manages to bail one another out of a string of sticky situations—both hilarious and otherwise. They both learn something of the customs and meaning of the two holidays while working through tears and laughter—not to mention conflicts sparked by their very different personalities. Everything culminates in a holiday performance at a local senior center that will have readers rising up to cheer them on. Though their history remains tantalizingly mysterious, for the protagonists, who narrate alternating chapters, it’s mission accomplished and more: Aviva emerges feeling more secure in her Jewish identity, while anxious Holly discovers unexpected depths of courage.
A warm bundle of holiday cheer. (song lyrics) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250360670
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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
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