Compelling and nuanced.
Interwoven stories explore themes of identity and belonging from the perspectives of 12 young Southeast and East Asian Americans.
Noted crowd pleasers, including Erin Entrada Kelly, Grace Lin, Linda Sue Park, Randy Ribay, and Christina Soontornvat, contribute to this volume. As a storm rages outside a chaotic Chicago airport, an interruption at a TSA checkpoint involving Thai American Paul and his family sparks racist rumors and confusion. The event has a ripple effect on each of the protagonists’ lives, prompting them to find their voices and fight for what’s right in their own ways as uncomfortable feelings bubble to the surface. Each story is seamlessly interconnected with the whole, allowing moments to be revisited from multiple points of view and creating a sense of intrigue as readers piece together the larger picture. Although each character’s journey leads them to different destinations—a guitar jam session, a basketball tournament, a first trip to Vietnam—there are glowing moments of solidarity ranging from the subtle to the profound as they cross paths. The stories are imbued with a strong sense of authentic lived experiences as well as moments that will resonate with readers of other backgrounds, prompting examination of their own interactions or unconscious biases; it welcomes non-Asian readers to learn and connect. This remarkable anthology offers a warm and heartfelt reassurance to all those who recognize themselves reflected in its pages: You are seen, and you do belong.
Compelling and nuanced. (editor’s note, meet the authors) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-323908-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Allida/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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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