Relatable, informative, and needed.
Middle schoolers deal with peer pressure in the age of online bullying.
Sophie Valentine hates crowds. They give her The Shakes, what she calls her panic attacks. Sophie’s best friend, Eve, has always been there for her, especially during the pandemic lockdown, but beginning over Thanksgiving break, Eve took an extended absence from school for inpatient treatment due to suicidality, information that Sophie has kept confidential. Now that Eve’s returned, something has changed—she’s hanging out with the Crash Crew, a group of popular kids known for their online challenges and exclusionary behavior. One group member, Chaz, makes Sophie especially uncomfortable, touching and verbally threatening her. A school forensic science unit involving a fictitious murder encourages Sophie to investigate the causes behind her dissolving friendship with Eve and the actions of the Crash Crew. The short chapters switch among settings that include the Valentine family bookstore (where Sophie helps out), Sophie’s therapy sessions, and school. The chapters close with statements from supporting characters that echo witness testimonies in the science project. Sophie’s gentle conversations with her therapist and her Greek American ER doctor mother help her unpack social media bullying and sexual harassment; both adults provide sound and compassionate advice. Conklin offers readers practical, hope-filled, and developmentally appropriate perspectives on social anxiety and peer pressure. Main characters are coded white.
Relatable, informative, and needed. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780316509176
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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