Cupcake recipes and baking tips are included in this overlong (for the audience) effort that misses the opportunity to...
Can developing a successful baking club help a fourth-grader move out from the shadow of a persistent bully?
Possibly, but will anyone truly believe it? Kylie has been the victim of nasty rich-girl Meredith’s cruel barbs and tricks ever since she moved to Connecticut in third grade. Finally, a new teacher reaches out to Kylie, though not really because of the bullying, and encourages her to start a baking club. She gathers up three other outsider girls, and together, after a couple of believable missteps, they begin to create cupcakes so good that they are in constant demand, the girls needing to make anywhere from dozens to hundreds a week to fulfill a long list of orders. But that’s okay; they implausibly rise to the challenge, baking massive numbers of cupcakes month after month. The bullying—conveniently never noticed by teachers—continues unabated. When given the opportunity to bake a massive order of cupcakes for Meredith’s country-club 10th-birthday party, Kylie takes the opportunity for retribution, but with horrifying consequences. The conclusion is vanilla-flavored with a too-facile resolution considering the nature of Kylie’s act, even if she didn’t fully grasp the significance of it.
Cupcake recipes and baking tips are included in this overlong (for the audience) effort that misses the opportunity to effectively deal with bullying. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4022-6449-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to...
A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee.
Bond begins briskly—within the first 10 pages, barn cat Burdock has overheard Dewey Baxter’s nefarious plan, and by Page 17, all of the farm animals have been introduced and Burdock is sharing the terrifying news. Grady, Dewey’s (ever-so-slightly) more principled brother, refuses to go along, but instead of standing his ground, he simply disappears. This leaves the animals to fend for themselves. They do so by relying on their individual strengths and one another. Their talents and personalities match their species, bringing an element of realism to balance the fantasy elements. However, nothing can truly compensate for the bland horror of the premise. Not the growing sense of family among the animals, the serendipitous intervention of an unknown inhabitant of the barn, nor the convenient discovery of an alternate home. Meanwhile, Bond’s black-and-white drawings, justly compared to those of Garth Williams, amplify the sense of dissonance. Charming vignettes and single- and double-page illustrations create a pastoral world into which the threat of large-scale violence comes as a shock.
Ironically, by choosing such a dramatic catalyst, the author weakens the adventure’s impact overall and leaves readers to ponder the awkward coincidences that propel the plot. (Animal fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-33217-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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