A fitting farewell packed with action, humor, and heart.
A Perilous Journey of Danger and Mayhem enters its final leg in this trilogy closer.
After The Treacherous Seas (2019), Molly Pepper; her inventor mother, Cassandra; her best friend, Emmett; Emmett’s long-lost-but-recently-found father, Capt. Wendell Lee; and sentient robot Robot are headed back to America. They face an assuredly bad reception, with three out of the five wanted fugitives, the captain a legal citizen but unable to prove it under the racist climate of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Robot arguably someone else’s property. In between the wacky hijinks of sneaking into the country and evading arrest, tension arises from Molly’s and Emmett’s uncertainty about whether his family reunion spells their imminent separation. The kids are prompted into action in the second act when a clue in a newspaper reveals their nemesis, Ambrose Rector, is back and planning something big. Parental reluctance to get involved leads to Molly, Emmett, and Robot’s sneaking off to Washington, D.C., to thwart Rector (which requires first figuring out his plan) and includes a delightful heist at the Smithsonian and tracking down the Mothers of Invention. Reversals and betrayals open the final act of the story. Despite his silliness and tendency toward monologue, Rector’s an effective villain because he plausibly stays a step ahead of the heroes and even makes good points during the final showdown. The alternate-history epilogue dazzles. Emmett and his father are Chinese; most other characters default to White.
A fitting farewell packed with action, humor, and heart. (afterword) (Historical fantasy. 8-14)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-234203-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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