A lighthearted celebration of life, friendship, and rolling with the punches. (Fiction. 8-12)
The first in an illustrated middle-grade series about growing up—and roller derby.
Fifth graders and best friends Kenzie and Shelly have always done everything together. They also share the same dream: to be on the same roller derby team. It’s only 2,000 days until they turn 15 and can join the local “wreck” league. But when tryouts for a new junior league are announced, the girls no longer have to wait. The catch: if “Kenzilla” and “Bomb Shell” want to be on the same team, they need to try out as a team. The Dynamic Duo must find a way to expand to a fivesome, and introvert Kenzie will need to accept that she must share outgoing Shelly with new people. The third-person limited narration sympathetically conveys Kenzie’s struggle. The derby scenes are fast-paced and fun to read, with clearly explained rules; readers who hope for the further support of a glossary will be disappointed, however. Expressive black-and-white graphic novel–style illustrations show wide diversity among classmates and derby members. Kenzie and Shelly are white; new teammate and basketball player Tomoko is Asian and larger than the other girls; skateboarder and Kenzie’s crush, Bree, is black and wears her hair in locs; and a third, shy Camila, is implied Latinx. Kenzie’s dad is trans, a fact that is incidental to the story.
A lighthearted celebration of life, friendship, and rolling with the punches. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4079-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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