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YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, DAVID BRAVO

A joyful, surprising, time-traveling delight.

David Bravo is having the worst day ever when a time-traveling dog shows up and offers him a chance to do it all over.

Tuesday, Sept. 12, truly takes the cake as the most awful day of 11-year-old David’s entire life. It starts with him anxiously fumbling through his first middle school presentation about his heritage: He has a Brazilian and Mexican American father and a Japanese American mother from Hawaii, and he has difficulty explaining that he is adopted. This is followed by an embarrassing food-poisoning incident that ends with David’s causing an accident that hurts his best friend Antoine’s ankle during cross-country practice. His wish to redo everything is granted by the arrival of Fea, a talking, shape-shifting dog who says her new mission is to help David repair his timestream. His first thought is to fix things for Antoine, worried their friendship may be on the line, but when that doesn’t help, David and Fea end up going back and forth in time trying to make things right. This funny, brave, charming novel is packed full of delights. The plot goes to utterly unexpected and beautiful places in a journey about heritage, culture, choice, and, above all, love and connection. David learns to navigate the many aspects of his identity—his anxiety, his budding romantic feelings for Antoine, and his background as a Latinx by birth—and brings the entire well-developed, diverse cast of characters together while doing so.

A joyful, surprising, time-traveling delight. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-300815-1

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022

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CHARLOTTE'S WEB

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

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GHOSTS

Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...

Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.

Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.

Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016

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