A beautifully realized book that reminds readers that there’s more than one rhythm to dance to.
In this latest offering from award winner Méndez, a crisis leads a girl to wrestle with questions of selfhood: “Without dance, I wasn’t sure who I was.”
Florencia del Lago, whose parents are from Argentina, is cast as the first-ever Latina Clara—and, at 11, the youngest one, too—in the Utah Valley Junior Ballet ensemble’s performance of The Nutcracker. With the starring role comes tremendous pressure from Madame Sophie, her strict ballet instructor. Flor’s grades suffer, she constantly questions her abilities and appearance, and her mother’s own unfulfilled ballerina dreams weigh on her. On the night of the first performance, Flor has a panic attack, which leads to public humiliation and a terrible fight between Mamá and Madame Sophie. Flor loses her spot in the studio, and her best friend, Selena, assumes the role of Clara. Flor is forced to evaluate herself, her love of dance, and the true definition of friendship. Flor’s journey is full of self-reflection, but her ample progress and insights propel the story and balance the introspective moments. That Flor is able to move past people and activities that don’t serve her, while getting therapy and trying to find new things to make her happy, will serve as inspiration to anyone who feels defined by something they used to do.
A beautifully realized book that reminds readers that there’s more than one rhythm to dance to. (author’s note, glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781643796437
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tu Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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