This spinoff is heavy on the poop jokes and light on almost everything else—readers expecting a boy Dork Diaries with equal...
This is Max Crumbly's first experience in public school, and so far he's vomited on bully Doug "Thug" Thurston, forfeited a race due to his insistent bladder, and been locked in his locker—but it's still better than home-schooling with Grandma.
Humiliation's a bummer, but cute Erin Madison seems friendly, so the asthmatic, white eighth-grader perseveres. Max laboriously introduces his quirks (chiefly a preoccupation with bathroom functions, but he also likes comic books and rap), his supporting cast, and plot elements in an illustrated "journal" that's marked by many exclamation points and cross-outs. The latter can be baffling; readers will understand why Max seeks to conceal his crush on Erin from his putative audience (and himself), but why redact "I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and POOP better lyrics!"? Pacing is uneven: the action doesn't really get underway till about the two-thirds mark, when Thug locks Max up again, this time for a long weekend, and the would-be superhero discovers three inept burglars as he tries to escape—and then the story ends on a cliffhanger. Even given its conscious nod to comic books, the plotting is implausible and the prose often painfully artless ("That's when I excitedly came up with a brilliant plan!"), making its eighth-grade authorship all too convincing.
This spinoff is heavy on the poop jokes and light on almost everything else—readers expecting a boy Dork Diaries with equal nuance may be surprised . (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6001-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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