Nonstop laughs, mischief, and fun.
Airi Sano is back for more adventures in this story in which she is framed when things go wrong with the school play.
Sixth grader Airi loves to pull pranks, but she’s made a deal with her mom and dad: If she can do better in school, she’ll get a cellphone and maybe even karate lessons. Things are looking up now that she’s been diagnosed with dyslexia, and her teacher is helping her with learning strategies. Airi is earning the best grades she’s ever had and has real friends to talk to—and play tricks with. When the school play is announced, Airi signs up to be with her best friend, Mei. At first, she’s nervous about reading her lines, but after a few drama classes, excitement takes over. But things start to go wrong when some terrible incidents occur, and Mei, some classmates, and even the principal blame Airi. Determined to prove her innocence and save the play, Airi must catch the real culprit. In the process of navigating ups and downs, she learns what real friendship is made of. Told in the first person and enhanced by interspersed case file reports, humorous footnotes, and lively black-and-white illustrations, Airi’s narrative is hilarious and engaging. The spot art adds cultural context to the Hawaiian setting and Airi’s Japanese American Army family life. The supporting cast represents diverse cultures.
Nonstop laughs, mischief, and fun. (land acknowledgment) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593465813
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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