A frothy, occasionally scattered series starter to introduce the wide, entertaining mythological world.
Norse mythology is rewoven into a boarding school story starring the Vanir “girlgoddess of love and beauty,” Freya.
Freya’s unhappy about transferring away from her school and friends in Vanaheim to Odin’s new Asgard Academy, to which he’s summoning chosen students from all nine worlds on Yggdrasil. Freya’s special magic involves prophecies given by Brising, her jewel—which she drops and loses during the arrival chaos. She’s also uncomfortable because Vanaheim and Asgard were recently at war, a war supposedly caused by her missing nanny, Gullveig, and which has left Asgard’s wall destroyed. There is a lot going on. Prankster Loki exploits Mason, a fellow student who has a crush on Freya, by peer-pressuring Freya into a bet: If scrawny Mason rebuilds the wall in three days without help, Freya will give Mason her heart, the sun, and the moon. But Mason has some tricks up his sleeves. When not in class or sneaking off to recover Brising from dwarves, Freya’s overcoming suspicions and making friends with kids from other worlds, especially her Aesir roommates, and she learns that her true gift is friendship. (In one puntastic storyline the girls brainstorm a name for their group before landing on the series title, Thunder Girls.) Peacemaking is important, both between Gullveig and Odin and between Freya and Mason. The book assumes a white default.
A frothy, occasionally scattered series starter to introduce the wide, entertaining mythological world. (authors’ note, further reading) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-9640-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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