Not much happens, but it’s all fun and readily recognizable middle school stuff.
Best friends Piper and Olivia are back for a second outing in The Pages Between Us series.
The sixth-graders have a lot to adjust to in middle school. Piper is an indifferent student but a talented videographer. Olivia is dealing with serious crushes and the just as crushing news that the Battle of the Books team might be defunct for lack of interest. The two pair up: Piper makes a first-rate video that’s posted online and stars Olivia, and both reap benefits when the video starts to go viral. The entire tale is related through the (very long) notes the pair exchange in a shared journal, with the occasional addition of illustrations, video scripts, and other addenda to add variety. It’s not easy to see how they have the time to craft such wordy messages. The pair are differentiated enough that each voice is recognizable. They both have their own middle school issues to angst over, Piper that she feels like an unnecessary, unappreciated member of her large family and Olivia that she overthinks everything and gets a bit worked up as a consequence. A popular classmate also weighs in through her blog, which adds a humorous counterpoint to the often earnest journal entries. Piper and Olivia are both depicted with light skin on the cover, blonde Olivia’s a bit lighter than brunette Piper’s.
Not much happens, but it’s all fun and readily recognizable middle school stuff. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-237774-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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