Chronicling the importance of empathy and openness, this fourth in the Carver Chronicles is a pleasing addition to a series...
Young Calvin Vickers must come to terms with an all-too-familiar new neighbor, the biggest bully at Carver Elementary.
Could Harper Hall just be a good kid with a troubled past? Calvin doesn’t want to be anywhere close to find out. “Big for his age” Harper Hall is someone “you don’t cross,” someone “you don’t say no [to] if he asks for one of your three Oreos,” someone who looks like “he just might pound someone into the ground.” How can Calvin focus on the school science fair when his world has just been rendered a shambles? What seems to be an impossible relationship is given hope when Calvin is offered an entry into Harper’s inner life; he learns that Harper’s mother struggles with housing insecurity and finding steady income, forcing Harper into foster care. The irony is that the cigarette-smoking, coldhearted foster grandmother who cares for Harper is not as well-equipped for the job as his troubled but loving mother. The reductive, negative-trope–supporting foster mother makes for a slight disappointment in an early chapter book that otherwise handles complexity with warmth. Harper, Calvin, and Calvin’s pals are depicted as black in Freeman’s soft, black-and-white illustrations, and Carver is a welcoming, multicultural place.
Chronicling the importance of empathy and openness, this fourth in the Carver Chronicles is a pleasing addition to a series in which diverse readers can recognize themselves in starring roles. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-80127-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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A funny and timely primer for budding activists.
Problems are afoot at Emily Dickinson Elementary School, and it’s up to Bea Garcia to gather the troops and fight.
Bea Garcia and her best friend, Judith Einstein, sit every day under the 250-year-old oak tree in their schoolyard and imagine a face in its trunk. They name it “Emily” after their favorite American poet. Bea loves to draw both real and imagined pictures of their favorite place—the squirrels in the tree, the branches that reach for the sky, the view from the canopy even though she’s never climbed that high. Until the day a problem boy does climb that high, pelting the kids with acorns and then getting stuck. Bert causes such a scene that the school board declares Emily a nuisance and decides to chop it down. Bea and Einstein rally their friends with environmental facts, poetry, and artwork to try to convince the adults in their lives to change their minds. Bea must enlist Bert if she wants her plan to succeed. Can she use her imagination and Bert’s love of monsters to get him in line? In Bea’s fourth outing, Zemke gently encourages her protagonist to grow from an artist into an activist. Her energy and passion spill from both her narration and her frequent cartoons, which humorously extend the text. Spanish-speaking Bea’s Latinx, Einstein and Bert present white, and their classmates are diverse.
A funny and timely primer for budding activists. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 6-9)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2941-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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