A poignant story of trauma, healing, and familial love.
Fifth grader Mélie learns that her father is coming to live with them.
Mélie has never met her father, Sami, who’s been imprisoned in an unnamed country for years. She pores over photos of a young Sami while her mother explains that he was imprisoned for his refusal to be quiet. When Sami arrives, their small apartment feels even tinier. Sami barely speaks, does little but watch television, and is terrified of going outside; on top of that, Sami and Mélie don’t speak the same language. Mélie resents these changes, even as she longs for true connection and wonders what a “real” family is. Later, she runs into her former teacher Mr. Xavier; he and his partner, Luc, have just adopted their daughter, the similarly named Mei-Li, from overseas. As Mélie babysits for them, she observes their evolving and loving family dynamic and becomes determined to build a connection with her father. Through art and poetry, the two grow closer, and the family draw strength from one another as Papa grapples with his trauma. Goupil’s second story featuring Mélie, translated from French and originally published in Canada, stands alone, with simple, accessible prose in short chapters that move the plot forward in increments that are meaningful and reflective. Physical descriptions and references to race and ethnicity are minimal, though the setting appears to be French Canadian.
A poignant story of trauma, healing, and familial love. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781773067230
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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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