A heartfelt and endearing snapshot of adolescence.
Turning 12 isn’t easy.
In this stand-alone companion to Growing Pangs (2022), Katie cannot wait for her 12th birthday. She’s looking forward to getting her first real babysitting job, auditioning for the musical Annie, and hanging out with BFFs Ginni and Amalie. Unfortunately, 12 isn’t turning out as she expected: Ginni and Amalie are moving away to help their grandmother, Katie doesn’t land her coveted lead role in the musical, the mean girls in her church youth group bully her, and her anxiety and OCD (which she describes as her “buzzing thoughts”) seem to be worsening. When Katie meets Grace, who’s also cast in Annie, she realizes that this is her first crush. Growing up home-schooled and religious, she’s been steeped in purity culture and homophobia, creating a deep chasm of anxiety as she struggles to find self-acceptance, confidence, and community. Loosely based on Ormsbee’s own life, this delightful tale is a stellar middle-grade offering, adroitly capturing the heartbreak and joy of early adolescence. The alluringly vibrant illustrations feel cinematic, with their immersive feel and keen emphasis on facial expressions. Notes from both the author and artist provide resources and enriching anecdotes. With its unabashed candor, empathy, and accessibility, this book will appeal to fans of Raina Telgemeier, Kayla Miller, and Shannon Hale who are searching for their next favorite read. Katie and Grace present white; Amalie and Ginni have brown skin and wavy black hair.
A heartfelt and endearing snapshot of adolescence. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780593650066
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House Graphic
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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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