Another sequel is in the offing, and young mystery fans should be glad.
Wallace and Mason Investigations is on the case of the missing mascot.
Noir-obsessed Howard Wallace and down-to-earth Ivy Mason, middle school detectives, catch a new case. Junk-shop owner Marvin, to whom Howard owes many favors, wants his grandnephew Carl’s name cleared. It seems that Carl, who happens to be on Howard’s enemies list (for wedgies past), stands accused of kidnapping his own basketball team’s mascot, Spartacus the pug, and so he’s been suspended from the team. Howard and Ivy take the case, but due to past problems at school, they can’t detect during the week. That stricture is lifted when coach Mr. Williams hires them to find the pug before the big game. Twists turn and turn again, and the detective duo nearly breaks up as they work and surprise themselves by teaming with former enemies. Lyall’s sophomore effort lacks some of the zing of series opener Howard Wallace, P.I. (2016), but mystery fans should enjoy it anyway. It leaps from the tired trope of the stolen mascot to land in new territory, and the characters interact realistically and have real kid problems. It doesn’t have much to do with Shadow of a Doubt, from which it surely draws its name, but the target audience won’t notice. Ethnicity is denoted with naming conventions; the story hews to the white default.
Another sequel is in the offing, and young mystery fans should be glad. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1955-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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