Similar in subject to the author’s Shanghai Messenger (2005) but different in approach, this is just right for middle-grade...
A two-week trip to China allows sixth-grader Anna Wang to reflect on her Asian-American identity.
At the end of The Year of the Baby (2013), Anna’s teacher, Ms. Sylvester, invited Anna to come with her to Beijing to help her take home an adopted Chinese baby. In this third title in the series, Anna does just that, leaving for an unfamiliar country almost before she’s adjusted to middle school. Anna’s journey provides an opportunity to consider the question “Who am I,” raised in her social studies class. Very aware of differences of skin and hair color, she appreciates that in China she doesn’t stand out. It’s a strain to speak a language she doesn’t know well, and she misses her family. Her narration clearly conveys the experience of foreign travel from a sixth-grade point of view; it’s light on famous sights and heavy on personal encounters. A friendly hotel waitress invites Anna to her family’s one-room home. She even gets to visit the Lucky Family Orphanage where her own sister once lived, bringing the money she and new middle school friends raised with a fortune-cookie bake sale and baby caps they knitted.
Similar in subject to the author’s Shanghai Messenger (2005) but different in approach, this is just right for middle-grade Anna fans ready for new experiences . (Fiction. 7-11)Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-10519-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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