Every kid—and every parent—who’s ever suffered through a family road trip will feel as one with Greg.
You’d think that if anyone would know better, it would be Greg Heffley’s mother.
But no. When she reads an article in Family Frolic magazine about wholesome family road trips, she insists on taking one right now. What ensues is the kind of totally over-the-top mayhem that the Wimpy Kid’s fans have come to expect—and more. The family packs too much stuff to fit into the car, so they decide to tow Dad’s utterly unseaworthy boat as extra cargo space. Mom insists on educational enrichment (learn-to-speak-Spanish CDs, lame-o car games), “real food” (brown-bag “Mommy Meals” instead of fast food) and “authentic” fun (a country fair with no rides but a guess-the-pig’s-weight contest in which the prize is the pig; baby Manny wins). They spend the night in the absolute quintessence of a cruddy motel. Two slapstick driving sequences are both Hollywood-ready and extremely funny, especially in Kinney’s accompanying cartoons; Greg’s free-associative riff on humorless do-gooders who seek to censor such potty-humor classics as a wink-and-a-nod–disguised Captain Underpants will find an appreciative audience. By taking the Heffleys on the road, Kinney both gives himself an almost universally familiar experience to lampoon and places Greg in the rather unusual position of being almost entirely justified in his misanthropy, which is downright refreshing.
Every kid—and every parent—who’s ever suffered through a family road trip will feel as one with Greg. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1189-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
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
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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