Predictable but fun.
Can an app actually make you cool?
After being exclusively home-schooled by her software programmer parents, bespectacled 12-year-old Zoey McIntyre is entering eighth grade in public school. With her own penchant for coding, Zoey makes an app she names Cool Code that features an adorable pink llama avatar named C.C. who advises her on how to be socially successful. Her first day of school is mostly a disaster, however, though she meets Daniel and Morgan, who invite her to their after-school coding club. Zoey divulges the truth about her app, and the three decide to work on it together. As C.C.’s database of knowledge grows, the cute but bossy creature begins to take over Zoey’s life in unbearable ways. He commands her to do things that make her uncomfortable, like running against Daniel in the school election, and takes the initiative, acting on her behalf in unsettling ways. What will Zoey do: continue on an exhausting path to being cool or eschew C.C. and stick by her true friends? Langeland’s text is an easy read, with a tried-and-true message of friendship that covers well-trod ground with its easily accessible—albeit moralistic—ending. While Zoey, Daniel, and Morgan are sympathetic, their lack of depth renders them overly facile at times. Mai’s bright, full-color art is reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier’s and should instantly appeal to her fans. Zoey reads White; Daniel appears Black, and Morgan presents Asian.
Predictable but fun. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-54932-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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