Unlikely to break any records for winning new fans.
Will breaking a world record break up long-standing friendships?
Ten-year-old Teddy Mars is obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records. He’ll even be in the next volume for sleeping in a tent the longest for a person under 12. World records are always on his mind. When his teacher announces the school’s annual invention fair—and her deep desire to win, for once—Teddy’s constant attempts to plan another record get between him and his best friends, Lonnie and Viva, since they have to work in different invention groups. Despite his dislike of group records, Teddy, his new partners, and his old friends decide to break the record for plastic bags collected in secret, while working on their inventions, but disagreements threaten their plans. Meanwhile, Teddy’s home life with preoccupied parents, five needy sisters, and a brat of a little brother (nicknamed “The Destructor”) complicates matters to no end. Burnham’s second Teddy Mars title is chock-full of more quirky records, many straining to act as comparisons to events in Teddy’s life. Even records enthusiasts may find it tiresome. In this trying-to-be realistic tale, Teddy’s family is played for over-the-top laughs, but, like much of the novel’s other humor, it’s trying too hard. Teddy and Viva appear to be white in Spencer’s illustrations, while Lonnie is black; their fairly diverse classroom includes a Cambodian immigrant.
Unlikely to break any records for winning new fans. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-227813-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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