A heartfelt story highlighting activism and showing how change does not come easily.
Can middle schoolers save the environment and the world?
When 12-year-old Mimi Laskaris moves to a small island in Florida with her family, she is immediately taken with the beach and shells. But she quickly notices problems: plastic bags caught in trees and litter washed up on the beach. After learning about Melati and Isabel Wijsen, sisters who started a movement to ban single-use plastic bags in their home of Bali, Mimi decides to try to do the same in her new community. She becomes absorbed in organizing and gathering signatures for a petition, though she also worries about what her classmates might think. As Mimi’s continued activism causes strain in her new friendships and affects her grades, her parents notice that her piano practice has been neglected. Mimi does want to focus on school and piano, but how can she when she can’t get enough signatures for her petition? This novel in verse explores environmental concerns many young people today have and shows how change can be made close to home. Mimi is Greek American, and other students from her new and old schools are cued as ethnically diverse. Dimopoulos gives some examples of the international nature of the youth climate justice movement in the text and supplementary notes; a foreword by Melati Wijsen adds a special touch.
A heartfelt story highlighting activism and showing how change does not come easily. (author’s note, timeline, activist profiles, resources, scientist interview, bibliography) (Verse novel. 8-12)Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-53815-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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