Well intended but lacking in execution.
A rising middle schooler fights for more affordable housing in her wealthy town.
Sunny Parker, a white 11-year-old, has no plans for the summer other than helping her widowed dad, who works as the manager of Del Mar Garden Apartments, the affordable housing complex where they live. On a walk through the wealthy neighborhood surrounding Del Mar, Sunny and Mrs. Garcia, her neighbor and mom figure, see that the site of a nearby closed elementary school is being considered for building more affordable housing. Mrs. Garcia, who says that “money breeds mean,” doesn’t think the mostly high-income townsfolk will support the measure; when she’s proven right, Sunny and her best friend, Haley, who’s Black, embark on a campaign to change hearts and minds, even though Sunny’s own father disapproves of their activism. The ethnically diverse Del Mar residents, including a young Ukrainian single mom who’s being abused by her boyfriend, are well drawn, but the rich people are mostly presented without nuance as being against the “lowlifes” whom they believe an affordable housing complex would bring. Finnegan doesn’t explain the concept of affordable housing in a way that feels clear enough for middle-grade readers to understand, although they will grasp that Sunny and her neighbors are being denigrated. Sunny’s dad is enigmatic; the emotional ending involving him, while well written, seems to come out of nowhere.
Well intended but lacking in execution. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781665930086
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
A real gem.
A 10-year old girl learns to adjust to a strange town, makes some fascinating friends, and fills the empty space in her heart thanks to a big old stray dog in this lyrical, moving, and enchanting book by a fresh new voice.
India Opal’s mama left when she was only three, and her father, “the preacher,” is absorbed in his own loss and in the work of his new ministry at the Open-Arms Baptist Church of Naomi [Florida]. Enter Winn-Dixie, a dog who “looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.” But, this dog had a grin “so big that it made him sneeze.” And, as Opal says, “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.” Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal meets Miss Franny Block, an elderly lady whose papa built her a library of her own when she was just a little girl and she’s been the librarian ever since. Then, there’s nearly blind Gloria Dump, who hangs the empty bottle wreckage of her past from the mistake tree in her back yard. And, Otis, oh yes, Otis, whose music charms the gerbils, rabbits, snakes and lizards he’s let out of their cages in the pet store. Brush strokes of magical realism elevate this beyond a simple story of friendship to a well-crafted tale of community and fellowship, of sweetness, sorrow and hope. And, it’s funny, too.
A real gem. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
SEEN & HEARD
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