A sensitive story about sexual harassment and bullying with a feel-good ending.
Three eighth-graders manage the fallout after someone publishes a ranked list of the prettiest girls in their class.
Being ranked No. 1 throws young poet Eve Hoffman’s life into chaos. A second-place ranking knocks Sophie Kane for a loop, too; she’s desperate never to be seen as “less than” or “white trash” like her single mom. Nessa Flores-Brady never expected to make the list (not because she’s Latina, but because she’s fat), and she’s determined not to let it affect her. Still, the rankings put Eve and Nessa’s best friendship at risk, threaten Sophie’s status as the most popular, and galvanize the eighth grade into targeted bullying. The rude, disgusting, and occasionally anti-Semitic messages that flood Eve’s phone are all too familiar for anyone who’s attended a majority-white middle-class American school—even their principal, an Asian American woman, recalls a time a boy snapped her bra so hard she bled, and no adults did anything. To the girls’ credit, they communicate about the effects of normative beauty standards and band together against the people (mostly boys) who enforce them, but of course the perpetrator isn’t whom they think. Eve’s older brother, Abe, and classmate Winston (who seems to be white) offer windows into the pressures of toxic masculinity. Endearingly nerdy references permeate the narrative. Their school is a diverse one, with difference mostly conveyed through naming convention.
A sensitive story about sexual harassment and bullying with a feel-good ending. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62672-923-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A warm bundle of holiday cheer.
In a funny, feel-good tale, 12-year-old twins separated at birth meet by chance and try to pull off a family switch during the December holidays.
The girls, who are cued white, agree that it would be a delicious prank, but each has a personal motive, too: Aviva Davis, who was adopted by a culturally Jewish mom and a Black dad who was raised Christian, wonders what it’s like to celebrate Christmas. Budding author Holly Martin, who was adopted by a white-presenting single mom, sees a golden opportunity to gather experiences for a school writing assignment about facing her fears. In a plot as sweet as a Hanukkah jelly doughnut and twisty as a Christmas cinnamon roll, the pair just manages to bail one another out of a string of sticky situations—both hilarious and otherwise. They both learn something of the customs and meaning of the two holidays while working through tears and laughter—not to mention conflicts sparked by their very different personalities. Everything culminates in a holiday performance at a local senior center that will have readers rising up to cheer them on. Though their history remains tantalizingly mysterious, for the protagonists, who narrate alternating chapters, it’s mission accomplished and more: Aviva emerges feeling more secure in her Jewish identity, while anxious Holly discovers unexpected depths of courage.
A warm bundle of holiday cheer. (song lyrics) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250360670
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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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