Review: Karen's Grandmothers by DK Yingst and Ann M Martin

DK Yingst's debut Little Sister graphic novel adaption, Karen's Grandmother's (and ninth in the series overall) is a winner. This time around, we see Karen participating in a programme at school where the kids 'adopt' a grandparent at the local nursing home. Karen is very excited at the prospect. Thanks to her status as a 'two-two' this means she will now have five grandmothers overall--two biological grandmothers, two step grandmother and now an adopted grandmother. She thinks it might even be a record. The only flaw in this plan is that her little house bestie Nancy Dawes isn't sharing in her excitement. Nancy doesn't have a grandmother, she is afraid of old people and she most defiantly does not wish to take part in the programme. Karen needs a way to show Nancy that old people are pretty cool, but what happens when she sets Nancy and one of her grandmothers up as pen pals, and Granny from Nebraska starts taking more of an interest in Nancy and little notice of Karen? And worse still, Karen isn't getting along so well with her new adopted grandmother. Maybe five grandmothers are too many ...

This was such a fun, cute read perfect for middle-graders. Karen's imagination--believing herself to be a record holder of most grandmother's ever is very entertaining and illustrated well. The story with Nancy is handled well, with the kids resolving things for themselves and leads to a heartwarming best-for-everyone ending. As always, the adaption has a lot to offer adults who grew up reading the originals, while still being relevant to young readers. Overall, a lot of fun and I loved it.

Highly recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Review: Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh

Image
I picked up a copy of the first novel in the Boys of Tommen series assuming that it was set in a university. Turns out that I was wrong. The characters are all in high school, though as per the note in the front, the novel is pitched at readers over the age of eighteen. The setting is quite dark and topics addressed include alcoholism, physical abuse and bullying. The romance, pairing a fifteen year old girl who is small for her age and described as having a childlike appearance with a boy who is physically mature, sexually active, who invades her privacy and is not far from his eighteenth birthday seems questionable.  After suffering through years of bullying at school, some of which put her in hospital, Shannon has transferred to a private school, one so expensive that her mother has to take out a loan to pay all the fees. Things are going well, she has friends at her new school, there are strong anti-bullying rules in place and everything at Tommen College seems well, nicer ... ...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more