Excels at being educational without sacrificing charm, humor, or excitement.
When the schools are gender-segregated after fifth grade, which one is a nonbinary kid supposed to choose?
Jamie Rambeau’s a pretty happy kid, growing up in Nottingham, England. It’s not until it comes time to enroll in middle school that they realize they’ll have to pick either the boys’ school or the girls’ school to attend. Almost everyone Jamie previously thought was an ally suddenly seems suspect. Even their affirming, supportive parents want them to “just PICK ONE… Stop attention-seeking.” If that’s how it’s going to be, Jamie decides, they’re just going to have to “speak up”—and they do. All the adults are quite willing to be supportive of a trans student, as long as they can fit that student’s gender into one of two tidy slots. So Jamie begins an activism campaign, which eventually leads to a news helicopter, a police interrogation, and (most importantly) qualified success. Olly, Jamie’s exuberantly gay older brother who enjoys wearing makeup and dresses, is an affectionate, funny delight. Their best friends, Daisy Adewumi and Ash Choudhary, whose own problems Jamie ultimately learns to acknowledge and respect even if they at first see them as not being “real problems,” are supportive and clever. Between chapters, Jamie provides clear, accessible definitions of concepts and terms related to the book’s central themes. Jamie is cued white; there’s ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.
Excels at being educational without sacrificing charm, humor, or excitement. (resources) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781499816815
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yellow Jacket
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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