Humorously over-the-top fare that will make a positive impact and inspire readers.
Willis, entrepreneurial fourth grade life coach, needs some help when it comes to his friendships.
Willis, introduced in Willis Wilbur Wows the World (2022), has found his destiny in helping other kids work through issues and identify their passions. Now he’s ready to expand and has ideas such as creating his own life coaching app. He’s even confident it will win the school’s Passion Fair competition. Willis lacks technology skills and can’t design it himself, but he’s sure his smart friends will partner with him to make his dream reality. To his absolute shock, they have other projects they want to pursue—separate from him! One even wants to do her project with the new kid whom Willis has declared his business competitor. This stand-alone story perfectly captures tween self-absorption. First-person narrator Willis would be unlikable if he didn’t reveal his insecurities so sensitively and often with humor. Happily, he’s open to feedback and gains in emotional intelligence. Willis does, after all, genuinely care about his friends and support them. This is a quick read with great tips for readers about friendship, the pitfalls of jealousy, and developing insight and confidence. Amusing black-and-white spot art enhances the narrative and shows Willis, who reads as White, and his racially diverse peers.
Humorously over-the-top fare that will make a positive impact and inspire readers. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-22407-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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