Honors the sweet mysteries of how to communicate with each other and the world.
Sixth grader Aurora Petrequin needs to say whatever she’s thinking.
She’s loud. Eleven-year-old Frenchie Livernois, her next-door neighbor, is autistic and nonvocal. Yet the moment these opposites meet they fit together perfectly. Frenchie focuses Aurora’s energy and helps her slow down and observe. Aurora looks out for Frenchie and leads him on adventures both nature lovers enjoy. But when Frenchie vanishes one day before school, Aurora, who feels bad about how often she messes up, realizes this is a “Worst Possible” fear come true, and her understanding of their best friendship is put to the test. Where did he go? Could she have stopped him from disappearing—and did she cause him to go? What does it all have to do with the piebald deer they spotted in the woods? Connor creates a playground of a coastal Maine town where the quirky locals are accessible and caring. Aurora’s and Frenchie’s families build an ecosystem that sustains and encourages their friendship, and Aurora’s buoyant enthusiasm infuses the story with adventurous fun and a lack of preachiness while not undercutting real stakes. However, Frenchie, although treated with respect, is a bit shortchanged and on occasion robbed of narrative autonomy. It can feel like he is being discussed rather than being involved, a situation compounded by the fact that fewer portions of the story are narrated from his point of view. Main characters default to White; Aurora is cued as neurodiverse.
Honors the sweet mysteries of how to communicate with each other and the world. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-299936-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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
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
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