An earnest and disarming tale of human and environmental caring.
A 12-year-old girl has a special connection to the lake that saved her life when she was an infant.
As a baby, Annalise mysteriously appeared one day in a bassinet placed secretly behind Alden’s store. Nearby Renn Lake noticed and helpfully surged up to attract the attention of Mrs. Alden, who found the abandoned child. Eventually Annalise was adopted by a younger childless couple who also owned and operated summer cabins on that same Wisconsin lake. By the age of 3, Annalise begins to hear and understand Renn in a way that no one else does. As a result, when toxic algae threaten the future of the lake and the livelihoods of all who depend on it, Annalise and her friend Zach spring into action with an ingenious plant-based solution. Meanwhile, Annalise eventually learns more about her personal history and integrates her “found day” narrative into her life. The story is told in both Annalise’s and Renn’s voices, in alternating chapters, until midway through, when Renn’s ill health leads to silence. Eventually Renn’s cousin Tru, the river that feeds the lake, takes up where Renn leaves off; the inclusion of both bodies of water as narrators adds fuller dimension to the story and emphasizes the importance of the environment to our lives. Human characters present as white. An author’s note provides further information on lake ecosystems and algal blooms.
An earnest and disarming tale of human and environmental caring. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-9632-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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