Disappointingly superficial
A socially awkward preteen named Lindsay emerges from a superhero fantasy world to make friends and become a BMX queen.
When Lindsay’s parents announce that they are going on an archaeological dig in Estonia, she can hardly believe her luck. She is sure to find a hidden amulet on their assignment that will finally reveal her superpowers, unleashing the fearless girl underneath her shy, bilingual facade. Instead, they tell her that she will be staying with her cousin and archnemesis, Phoebe, the tough-dressing and tattooed daughter of her tía Maria. All at once, she has to say goodbye to her house, her parents, and her comic books for a summer adventure that will push her to athletic new heights and force her to admit how wrong she was about her cousin’s dark nature. Getting to know the real Phoebe means attending her BMX classes at an indoor track named Joyride, where Lindsay enters an all-gender bike-jumping competition. While Lindsay stops judging Phoebe for her punk style of dress, she remains preoccupied with external appearances and popularity throughout the novel, undergoing a makeover in an attempt to fit it. Dressing for a training session, she reflects that “the hat makes me feel like I actually belong on the tracks at Joyride.” The author uses clothing styles and stereotypes in place of character development throughout, defeating the point of Lindsay’s earliest lesson. Biracial Lindsay’s mom is Mexican, and her father is white; she and Phoebe both have light skin and brown hair.
Disappointingly superficial . (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63565-277-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rodale Kids
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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
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