Fun and friendship combine for a satisfying sequel.
Following on My Dog Is Better than Your Dog (2015), this second in the CrimeBiters! series finds crime-fighting vampire dog Abby going to obedience school.
Eleven-year old Jimmy, white president and founder of the CrimeBiters club, seems to be falling out with his best friend, Irwin, a black boy, over fellow club member Daisy, the white girl whom both like. Jimmy has befriended former bully Baxter, a white boy and a new club member, and joins the local lacrosse team with him. Irwin resents the time Jimmy spends playing lacrosse, but Jimmy has become a good goalie and even begins skipping club meetings. Troublingly, lacrosse team members begin to experience too-frequent injuries, leading Jimmy to wonder if something’s afoot. Meanwhile, Abby chews up one too many of his mom’s shoes, and she might make Jimmy take Abby back to the shelter. To save Abby, Jimmy takes her to obedience class, where she becomes all too docile for Jimmy’s taste. Is she no longer a crime-fighting vampire dog? The two storylines merge when Abby helps to solve the injury mystery. Greenwald focuses far more attention on Jimmy’s precarious social life than on Abby this time, although he includes enough dog action to justify the book’s title. The gentle lesson on how friendship should endure even when something interferes is leavened with humor generated by the return of Jimmy’s nemesis from the previous book, Mrs. Cragg.
Fun and friendship combine for a satisfying sequel. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-78397-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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