An authentically awkward exploration of grief particularly well-suited for preteen boys.
Seventh-grader Noah Cohen and his best friend, Dash, eat, sleep, and breathe comedy, so it’s no surprise they choose to research Jewish comedians for their mitzvah project at Hebrew school, even if it means partnering with Noah’s female nemesis, Noa Cohen.
As long as Noah and Dash can spend their weekends watching movies and making up comedy sketches with Dash’s dad, the “coolest guy on the planet,” life is good. Until it isn’t. Dash’s father’s unexpected death is devastating for Noah, not only because he misses Gil, but because it drives a wedge between the two best friends as Dash struggles to cope. What’s worse is that Dash has found a new confidant seemingly overnight, leaving Noah reeling and desperate to win back his best friend. Despite the support of his two moms, his sister, and his rabbi, Noah leaps and lurches awkwardly through his first real experience with death. While it is uncomfortable and sometimes even painful to read, Noah’s struggle also feels incredibly authentic. And fortunately for readers, there’s just enough humor to help lighten the mood when things get dark. While the primary characters all appear to be white, it is beyond refreshing to see a story that is so thoroughly Jewish without a hint of persecution. And while bookshelves are filled with stories about children losing a family member, this novel offers something new by focusing on the unexpected loss of someone beloved but not related. An author’s note and list of resources follow the story.
An authentically awkward exploration of grief particularly well-suited for preteen boys. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55175-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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