An animated adventure centering family and friendships.
Can young Theo Tan and his friends infiltrate hell and save his brother, Jamie?
In this follow-up to Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit (2022), Theo and Kai, his newly minted spirit companion, seek a way to retrieve Theo’s brother’s soul; Jamie was also Kai’s original human master. Their quest takes them away from San Francisco on a dangerous adventure into Diyu, or “hell’s waiting room,” according to Chinese mythology, with the desperate—and very likely naïve—hope that Jamie can be brought back to life. Getting to Diyu is one difficult task, and getting out of there is even more complicated. They’ll have to navigate the dangerous courts of Diyu and the kings who rule them as well as formidable Princess Iron Fan. It’ll take lots of ingenuity and teamwork to pull it off without ending up permanently stuck in Diyu. Sutanto builds an intriguing fantasy world of spirits, spells, and mythologies. With dual narration from the first-person perspectives of Chinese American Theo and his shape-shifting fox spirit, Kai, the book takes readers on a well-paced journey that explores themes of identity, courage, connection, and especially grief and life after loss. Some comedic levity in the precarious situations the characters find themselves in balances the emotional themes. Kai is especially expressive, and her chapters frequently feature footnotes highlighting her feistiness and snark. A supportive friend group in Namita Singh, Danny Chang, and Xiaohua, Danny’s divine dragon companion, bring additional heart.
An animated adventure centering family and friendships. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781250794369
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded.
Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan(2012), returns to tell his tale.
Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Happily, her father works at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary, the zoo where Bob’s two best friends, Ivan the gorilla and Ruby the elephant, live, so Bob gets to visit and catch up with them regularly. Due to an early betrayal, Bob doesn’t trust humans (most humans are good only for their thumbs); he fears he’s going soft living with Julia, and he’s certain he is a Bad Dog—as in “not a good representative of my species.” On a visit to the zoo with a storm threatening, Bob accidentally falls into the gorilla enclosure just as a tornado strikes. So that’s what it’s like to fly. In the storm’s aftermath, Bob proves to everyone (and finally himself) that there is a big heart in that tiny chest…and a brave one too. With this companion, Applegate picks up where her Newbery Medal winner left off, and fans will be overjoyed to ride along in the head of lovable, self-deprecating Bob on his storm-tossed adventure. His wry doggy observations and attitude are pitch perfect (augmented by the canine glossary and Castelao’s picture dictionary of dog postures found in the frontmatter). Gorilla Ivan described Julia as having straight, black hair in the previous title, and Castelao's illustrations in that volume showed her as pale-skinned. (Finished art not available for review.)
With Ivan’s movie out this year from Disney, expect great interest—it will be richly rewarded. (afterword) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299131-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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