The world’s OK-est kid makes good in this fun romp.
Do you have to be good to be great?
Twelve-year-old Zeke Stahls wants to be good—or rather, he wants to want to be good, but he has an irrepressible mischievous streak. He is a dreamer and a schemer, both qualities that can lead to greatness but that, in Zeke’s hands, look more like a series of escalating pranks. Though certainly innovative, these hijinks do not endear him to his teachers and frequently cause his mother, a hardworking single parent, to clean up his messes—literally and figuratively. So it’s surprising to Zeke when he receives a letter from Gordon Notts, charitable programming director of the Klein Agency for the Betterment of All Mankind, inviting him to participate in a competition for the title of World’s Greatest Kid. Aware that he’s no kind of altruist, Zeke disregards the letter, but when Gordon Notts appears on his doorstep, Zeke is presented with a complex problem—a Gordian knot, if you will: Should he participate in an impossible contest on the off chance that he could win the $10,000 prize his family desperately needs? Of course he should. There is no shortage of enjoyable golden-hearted rascal stories in middle-grade fiction, and this one stands comfortably among them. Though readers will find no big surprises here, the character development, pacing, and writing are strong, making it an enjoyable read. Zeke and his family read white.
The world’s OK-est kid makes good in this fun romp. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9780062986030
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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