It’s a fine friendship story but not a great one.
A boy attends circus school to learn enough to save his family’s circus.
Twelve-year-old Sebastian Kostantinov, only son of ringmaster Dragan Kostantinov, seemingly has no circus talent at all—he can’t juggle, ride unicycles, do acrobatics, or swing on a trapeze. He can’t even manage to be a clown. He cares for the circus animals while they tour Eastern Europe until business falls off and the animals must be sold. Animals are old-school; newer circuses don’t have them. Despite his lack of talent, Seb worms his way into an exclusive Montreal circus school in hopes that he can learn enough to put the family back in the black. He makes friends with two other misfits, Frankie, an Italian parkour specialist, and Banjo, a rustic slackliner. But the circus school itself is in financial straits and seems likely to close—so Seb and his friends plot to save it. Delaney writes smoothly, but her plot has some gaping holes. If the prestigious school carries a waitlist, why not admit more pupils who can pay full tuition? Instead they admit Seb on full scholarship with the odd hope that his presumably wealthy father will become a big donor. The boarding school scenes tread very familiar ground, and the circus acts never quite come alive. The principal cast appears to be white, and the school is not a notably diverse one.
It’s a fine friendship story but not a great one. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-319850-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Puffin/Penguin Random House Canada
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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
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
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