Overall, another warm and charming outing, and the family's move to a different town and larger, permanent home is a...
This sequel to Bo at Ballard Creek (2013) continues the adventures of the 5-year-old gamine and her “two papas,” Alaskan gold miners in the late 1920s.
Bo’s outsized dads, who adopted her in infancy, are loving and hardworking. The conclusion of the first novel saw the family welcoming another child and relocating. In their new town they meet generous, kindly (with one exception) neighbors of various ethnicities. The children explore, make new friends and begin home-schooling. As before, the pacing is leisurely, and much is conveyed through clear exposition that evokes time and place well. Mild expletives and some mentions of smoking and drinking fill in a slightly rough-and-tumble background appropriate to the setting, and some darker elements encroach in the form of a character later revealed to be the victim of heartbreaking abuse. Then, Bo’s friend says the N-word, eliciting an adult’s firm rebuke. (The author’s note explains that at the time, the word was nonchalantly used.) Main characters are well-drawn, but some are stock—the jolly, Yiddish-speaking shopkeeper and the Japanese brothers with broken English feel tired.
Overall, another warm and charming outing, and the family's move to a different town and larger, permanent home is a satisfying ending—though Bo’s ever changing family dynamic may summon another sequel. (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9352-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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