A heartwarming fantasy exploring grief, friendship, and fairies.
Five children find a portal to fairyland.
Ten-year-old Jojo and her sisters, 11-year-old Maisie and 5-year-old twins Amy and Bee, are spending their summer outside while their mom, an author, tries to meet her looming deadline. The girls while away their sunny days, reading, playing, and imagining. When Theo comes to stay with his uncle, who lives across the street, he joins the gang. Last year, Jojo, the group’s storyteller, had woven an intricate tale of an impending attack upon the fairies from frightening skeletal birds she dubs “bone creatures,” but she never finished the story after the death of her beloved Grandma Nan. When the quintet follow a fairy through a tiny door in a tree, they discover that Jojo’s tale has taken on a life of its own, and she must summon the resolve to give it a conclusion. Bouwman’s clever middle-grade fantasy has a delightful throwback feel, noticeably absent of technology or adult intervention as the children spend entire days outside together. As the group delves further into fairyland, Jojo struggles to reconcile her own grief but comes to realize that Maisie and Theo have their own heartaches to unpack. Jojo directly references Narnia as inspiration for her tales, but the book also has much in common with The Neverending Story. Physical descriptions of characters are minimal.
A heartwarming fantasy exploring grief, friendship, and fairies. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781665912532
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
Plays to Rowling’s fan base; equally suited for gifting and reading aloud or alone.
A 7-year-old descends into the Land of the Lost in search of his beloved comfort object.
Jack has loved Dur Pig long enough to wear the beanbag toy into tattered shapelessness—which is why, when his angry older stepsister chucks it out the car window on Christmas Eve, he not only throws a titanic tantrum and viciously rejects the titular replacement pig, but resolves to sneak out to find DP. To his amazement, the Christmas Pig offers to guide him to the place where all lost Things go. Whiffs of childhood classics, assembled with admirable professionalism into a jolly adventure story that plays all the right chords, hang about this tale of loss and love. Along with family drama, Rowling stirs in fantasy, allegory, and generous measures of social and political commentary. Pursued by the Land’s cruel and monstrous Loser, Jack and the Christmas Pig pass through territories from the Wastes of the Unlamented, where booger-throwing Bad Habits roam, to the luxurious City of the Missed for encounters with Hope, Happiness, and Power (a choleric king who rejects a vote that doesn’t go his way). A joyful reunion on the Island of the Beloved turns poignant, but Christmas Eve being “a night for miracles and lost causes,” perhaps there’s still a chance (with a little help from Santa) for everything to come right? In both the narrative and Field’s accomplished, soft-focus illustrations, the cast presents White.
Plays to Rowling’s fan base; equally suited for gifting and reading aloud or alone. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-79023-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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