This book will appeal to a middle-grade crowd that isn’t into vampires and dystopias, as well as to those who create art...
Most novels about fashion end up being more about little divas than about the clothing; this is an exception.
This story celebrates the rewards of personal creativity and risks of self-expression. Zoey, an eighth-grader who loves to design new outfits, decides to start a fashion blog the summer before her middle school abolishes the rule requiring school uniforms. The stress of creating an outfit for the first day of school is alleviated by using her deceased mother’s sewing machine. Like the way she pieces together an outfit, Zoey assembles a valuable group of friends to support this endeavor. Some people, like her trusted best friends, Kate and Priti, know her inside and out. New friends, like Libby, provide a bit of embellishment. Others, like Jan from the notions store, and the new principal, Esther Austen, bring to the table the structure, wisdom and encouragement Zoey needs. The storyline follows a mildly dramatic arc, as Zoey is asked to design a prom dress for a fundraiser. When the unthinkable happens, Zoey must figure out a solution—quick! Can she do it?
This book will appeal to a middle-grade crowd that isn’t into vampires and dystopias, as well as to those who create art with their hands. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7934-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Simon Spotlight
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
