Utterly spellbinding.
Feeling excluded by her friends, a melancholy youngster sets out on a walk in search of solitude—and finds herself along the way.
Happening upon a lone tower, Carmela becomes bewitched by its denizen, a heavily mascaraed hag with a propensity for mind-reading and a welcome tinged with menace. As the pair busy themselves brewing an elixir meant to heal Carmela’s heartbreak, the girl hesitates. This recipe feels familiar. A grand tour of the tower’s turret, too, inspires a sense of possibility. By the time the duo open their doors to a coven of similarly kooky misfits, it’s wildly apparent that this space—be it physical, spiritual, or something else entirely—is where she belongs…and where she can create space for others, too. With the second installment in her Three Sisters trilogy, Sardà has struck gold. Both narrative and aesthetic ooze style, coolly occupying the intersection between cautionary folktale and coming-of-age fantasy epic. And while the story underscores just how powerful individuality can be when it’s made inclusive, Sardà reserves swaths of space for interpretation: What is imagined? What is reality? And does the difference matter? Readers will benefit from keeping a dictionary handy, since lofty vocabulary words appear throughout. The breathtaking beauty of Sardà’s illustrations, too, defy description—at once psychedelic, eerie, and Miyazaki-esque in their enchanting detail, they demand poring over. The result is singular, not merely a modern classic but one for the ages. Carmela and the witch are light-skinned.
Utterly spellbinding. (Picture book. 6-12)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781536243017
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Candlewick Studio
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
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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