Mostly successful and entertaining.
A popular girl risks exposing her hidden geek side to win a contest.
Sarah Anne only pretended to have “outgrown” MK Nightshade’s fantasy novels back in sixth grade in order to join her best friend, Roxy, in the popular clique of athletes, and she lives by strict rules to keep her geekery secret. But acing an online trivia game lands her a spot on a con panel (where she experiences sadly realistic misogyny) and eligibility for a new contest in which the person with the most points wins a trip to a special screening of the fandom’s latest movie. The challenges leave her dodging her friends and increasingly risking blowing her cool girl cover—and getting dropped by her best friend. In a dance subplot, the cutest, most popular boy in their grade wants her to be his date (and her friends pressure her as well), but Sarah Anne thinks he’s mean. The amusing obstacles Sarah Anne faces in the contest are counterbalanced by the nuanced social dynamics as the story builds to the inevitable turning point in which she needs to figure out her true self. Unfortunately, the plot goes a little off the rails in its climax, becoming harder to believe than Sarah Anne’s beloved characters Sir Oakheart and Lady Althena. Sarah Anne presents white, while Roxy and Sarah Anne’s would-be date are students of color; diversity is otherwise indicated through naming convention.
Mostly successful and entertaining. (Fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31458-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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