A beginner thriller with some real gems in it.
Stylish 10-year-old Jada Sly does not believe that her diplomat mother died in a plane crash; can her new top-secret spy crew help her decode the mystery behind her disappearance?
Jada’s father has been named the new director of the African-American Sly family museum, causing the little family to relocate from France to New York City. Papa calls her a “strong little black woman,” but she’s been having panic attacks since that crash. She also insists that her mother is alive. After all, Jada’s convinced Mama was really a spy, so her disappearance must just be part of a mission. At her new school, she befriends Brooklyn, another African-American girl, who introduces her to the secret spy club, and Jada is thrilled to enlist their help with her real-life mystery. All Jada knows is the name of a co-worker her mom mentioned before rushing off to allegedly catch her flight. Armed with that knowledge and glimpsing furtive men everywhere, she hatches a plan with her friends. While Jada’s family history and her interest in art are memorable, her narration doesn’t quite find its footing, at times sparkling but at others repetitive. The thriller plot is aimed squarely at genre beginners, requiring readers to follow Jada’s reasoning without question in order to find satisfaction in the over-the-top conclusion. The book’s design, however, with both Winston’s own grayscale illustrations and select text picked out with red highlights, is as snazzy as Jada.
A beginner thriller with some real gems in it. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-50536-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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
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