A base hit for readers interested in sports as well as neurodiversity.
Cassie Bennett has just finished eighth grade and is starting her final middle school all-star softball season. What she doesn’t realize is that it will be the most difficult yet best one yet.
This year there’s a new girl on their team who stands out, and it’s not just because she is an amazing player. Cassie’s dad, the team’s coach, tells her that Sarah Milligan is on the autism spectrum. When Cassie tries to push her teammates to accept Sarah immediately, the team fractures, leaving Cassie and Sarah on the outside. In the end Cassie finally learns what she needs to learn: She can’t fix people, either Sarah or her teammates. There is also a subplot of short-lived drama on the boys’ baseball team due to a new coach, which becomes comic relief for both Cassie and readers. In the fourth installment in his Home Team series (Point Guard, 2017, etc.), Lupica consciously focuses on neurodiversity. Readers learn the difference between sympathy and empathy as well as the truth that no matter how many common traits they say people with autism share, everybody’s different, and Sarah is most like herself. Among the resources Cassie consults is the website Autism Speaks; that there seems to be little awareness that it’s not universally trusted by autism activists may raise eyebrows. On the sports side, the play-by-play makes little accommodation for readers who don’t know the game, but those who are reading for the theme rather than the softball action should find that they can follow well enough.
A base hit for readers interested in sports as well as neurodiversity. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-1007-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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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