Perceptive but uneven.
A seventh grader grapples with the onset of puberty.
Eleven-year-old Piper Franklin, a gifted white girl, has taken puberty blockers since age 7 to delay precocious puberty. Now, her endocrinologist has cleared her to stop the injections. But Piper has no intention of entering puberty. Hormones and periods will only distract her from the upcoming academic decathlon, and she and BFF Tallulah—a girl from her gifted program who’s Black and has ADHD—are determined to win. Piper’s baby sister is distracting enough, frequently demanding Mom’s attention. Worse, womanhood means being weighed down by myriad indignities, something Piper dubs the Wordless Chain and struggles to name. Even metaphorical math—Piper’s attempt to explain emotions via mathematical concepts—can’t make Mom understand her reluctance to start puberty, and tensions rise despite her stepfather’s mediation. But as Piper develops a crush on Ivan, a Black trans boy from her support group for kids “having a tough time with puberty,” and hangs with her supportive older half sister, growing up seems more inviting…except for that Wordless Chain. Language for said Chain comes extremely late, and readers will share Piper’s increasing frustration as she struggles to articulate her dilemma. Ivan’s and Tallulah’s dialogue sparks eloquent insights into trans identity and neurodivergence (respectively), and Piper’s interspersed notes on the metaphorical math of friendship and family are thought-provoking. Unfortunately, the resolution of one major plot point strains credulity and echoes the trope of a disabled character inspiring nondisabled people.
Perceptive but uneven. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780062996664
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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