An openhearted, endearing, and unforgettable debut about the challenges of friendship, growing up, and the boundless love of...
In the face of a loved one’s illness, Georgie struggles with blended-family growing pains and the ups and downs of friendship.
It’s summertime, and for 11-year-old Georgie and her 6-year-old sister, Peaches, doing the latest dances offers a respite from the changes that came with their parents’ divorce. They have a new stepmom, Millicent, nicknamed “Millipede” by Georgie. Could she be the reason Georgie and Peaches don’t see their dad as much as they used to? The girls have also moved from Atlanta to the suburbs with their mother to live with their new stepdad, Frank, and stepsister, Tangie. Tangie is still mourning the sudden death of her younger sister, Morgan, five years earlier, and she’s less than thrilled about Georgie and Peaches’ arrival in her life. When Georgie accidently makes things worse with Tangie, she reaches out to a “getting-out-of-a-jam” expert, her best friend, Nikki. But even Nikki can’t solve the problem when someone close to Georgie falls seriously ill. Feisty, loyal Georgie is determined to make things right in her family and thwart a mean girl’s scheme. A budding romance and a timely lesson about social justice round out Georgie’s summer. Chock-full of cultural and historical references that reflect Georgie and her family’s and friends’ African-American heritage, Youngblood’s debut is a celebration of intergenerational family bonds. Readers in co-parenting or blended families especially will relate to the conflicts between Georgie’s loving but imperfect parents.
An openhearted, endearing, and unforgettable debut about the challenges of friendship, growing up, and the boundless love of family. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-368-01650-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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