A heartwarming and whimsical sequel.
Crushes, competition, and calamity ensue on a class camping trip.
Following on Nell of Gumbling: My Extremely Normal Fairy-Tale Life (2023), this cheery sequel follows ruddy, bespectacled Nell Starkeeper as she’s about to embark on an adventure with friends Thumbkin Gil, fairy Myra, human Leabelle, and unicorn-centaur Voila. The group is competing in the Multi-Disciplinary Wilderness Engagement Adventure, and the stakes are high, especially since Nell’s rival, Tony Pfluff, is also there. With his good looks, Romesh Roy, Nell’s group leader, immediately catches her eye, but her crush is tempered by his determination to win at all costs. The dynamics between the friends falter as unspoken crushes and resentments surge among them. When a misspoken wish upends Nell and the crew, communication and teamwork may be the only options that will save them. Steinkellner offers readers an alluring mix of Nell’s prose journal entries alternating with full-color comic panels; together they form a visually delightful page-turner. Though the story is rooted in a fantasy world, readers (especially those who appreciate the gentle angst of Raina Telgemeier’s and Judd Winick’s graphic novels) will find this volume utterly relatable; they’ll appreciate the young friends’ stumbles as they navigate their ways through life’s twists and turns. The cast is diverse, with queer characters, a range of skin tones, and a refreshingly realistic spectrum of body sizes.
A heartwarming and whimsical sequel. (annotated script, fun facts) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593570708
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Labyrinth Road
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
Heartening and hopeful, a love letter to black male youth grasping the desires within them, absorbing the worlds around...
Cooler-than-cool newcomer Styx Malone takes the more-sheltered brothers Caleb and Bobby Gene on a mischievous, path-altering, summer adventure of a lifetime as they embrace the extraordinary possibilities beyond the everyday in rural Indiana.
Readers may think an adventure such as they’ll find here wouldn’t be possible in the present day; this story takes place outside, where nature, know-how, creativity, and curiosity rule. Creeks, dirt roads, buried treasures, and more make up the landscape in Sutton, Indiana. Younger brother Caleb narrates, letting readers know from the outset that he’s tired of his dad’s racially tinged determination that they be safely ordinary: “I don’t want to be ordinary. I want to be…the other thing.” With Styx Malone around, Caleb and Bobby Gene will sure figure out what that “other thing” can become. The three black adolescents are enchanted with the miracle of the Great Escalator Trade, the mythic one-thing-leads-to-another bartering scheme that just might get them farther from Sutton than they’ve ever dreamed. As they get deeper and deeper into cahoots with Styx, they begin to notice that Styx harbors some secret ambitions of his own, further twisting this grand summer journey. “How do you move through the world knowing that you’re special, when no one else can see it?” begs the soul of this novel.
Heartening and hopeful, a love letter to black male youth grasping the desires within them, absorbing the worlds around them, striving to be more otherwise than ordinary. Please share. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1595-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
PERSPECTIVES
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