Spectral silliness with high appeal.
A tween spends the summer with his eccentric grandfather, ghosts, and more.
After a viral video taken on the last day of sixth grade solidifies his status as “Class Weirdo,” Maxen Smith wants nothing more than to be normal. Trouble is that Max can see ghosts—the real culprits behind what adults at school call his “incidents”—but nobody believes him. Reaching his last straw, Max’s dad sends him to stay with his estranged paternal grandfather, Ramhart Woodbead, in his mansion in Glimmerville. As the mansion and its inhabitants’ secrets slowly reveal themselves, Max learns that his weirdness is part of a family legacy. But when a dastardly plot renders Ramhart out of commission, Max finds himself woefully unprepared to take his place in keeping order between realms. With the help of a young ghost and a squad of Supernaturalists, Max must save not only his grandfather, but the world. Noël combines a quick pace, zany characters, and plenty of comedic relief to create a quirky adventure with heart. Strong themes of family legacies, personal mythologies, and destinies—if slightly heavy-handed—enhance the cautionary tale of hiding one’s true self. The over-the-top first-person narration keeps the tone infectiously light. From a Chupacabra to mutant glowworms, the creatures encountered mix the familiar with the original for delightful worldbuilding. Max and family are White by default, but side characters add some ethnic diversity.
Spectral silliness with high appeal. (Paranormal fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9823-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
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
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
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