Kitschy and tedious
Lou Lou and Pea are back for a second adventure following series opener Lou Lou & Pea and the Mural Mystery (2016).
Fifth-grade best friends, the white, budding horticulturist Lou Lou (short for Louise) and Latina fashionista Pea (short for Peacock) are thrilled to be helping their neighborhood, El Corazón, host the citywide Bicentennial Bonanza. When the mayor must leave town for a family emergency and the vice mayor takes the reins of the event planning, things go awry. Vice Mayor Argyle, who is a villain straight from vaudeville melodrama with his garish clothing and slick goatee, claims to have discovered the long-lost diary of the city’s founder, and its contents claim that rival neighborhood Verde Valley is the rightful host of the town anniversary fiesta. Lou Lou and Pea set out to prove the diary is a fake and reclaim their neighborhood’s hosting role. The ending is a foregone conclusion, though it takes several chapters longer than necessary to arrive at the destination. Despite the verbosity, silly alliterative names and the fanciful premise seem written for a younger audience than the reading level would suggest. Apart from half-Mexican Pea, Latinx characters appear in several supporting roles, and Spanish vocabulary and location names are sprinkled throughout the text. However, starting with the clunky “Verde Valley” and extending to awkward use of Spanish in dialogue, the feeling is one of a predominantly white culture that has co-opted Latinx culture and language as its own.
Kitschy and tedious . (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30298-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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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