A fun read for youngsters that will teach them something along the way.
Young Sophie Washington seeks treasure in Corpus Christi with her best friend and her little brother in Ellis’ middle-grade novel.
Sophie Washington is on vacation during the summer before seventh grade, visiting her grandmother in Corpus Christi, Texas, and spending time at the beach with her little brother, Cole, and best friend, Chloe. Cole is playing with their grandmother’s metal detector when it begins beeping, indicating something in the sand underneath a sand castle Sophie and Chloe just built. That something is a bottle with pennies and a note in it, initiating a mystery-solving adventure that involves following clues to find a treasure. The clues lead the trio (with Granny in tow) to various spots in the city, including a turtle release site; a boat named The Dolphin (captained by the wheelchair-using Mr. Williams) that takes them to a cove to snorkel; the USS Lexington, a World War II aircraft carrier; and, finally, the Ocean Life Center. The group stops at an ice cream shop run by Homer Thomas, whom the children first met on Mr. Williams’ boat. He gives the children their “treasure,” hundreds of pieces of chocolate wrapped in gold foil. This often delightful tale weaves fun facts into the adventure, making the book both educational and entertaining, as when Cole notes, “I read in my animal book that male turtles have long tails, and this one’s tail is short. Also, male sea turtles live mostly in the water, while female turtles come to the beach to nest.” Young readers will come away with a better understanding of sea turtles and their plight, awareness of accessibility issues, and a bit of United States Navy history. They’ll also learn about friendship and family, with Ellis doing a fine job of weaving her lessons naturally into the storyline. The book serves as a bit of a travelogue for Corpus Christi, as it features real locations in the city. This is one of a number of Sophie Washington books, and fans of this entry will certainly want to read others in the series.
A fun read for youngsters that will teach them something along the way.Pub Date: May 16, 2022
ISBN: 9781735338965
Page Count: 155
Publisher: Page Turner Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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