Confused readers will wish that the author had spent a lot more time fitting together the random and extraneous elements...
From the author of Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks (2008) comes an equally surreal cyber-caper loosely attached to an incoherent story line.
At 11 3/4, Daphna is already a talented composer, whose music transports listeners into refreshing trances—so she fits right in with the rest of her genius New York schoolmates. Harkin “Thunk” Thunkenreiser is developing a chewing-gum computer that puts the chewer online as long as the flavor lasts, and her friend Cynthia is recasting Macbeth as a one-woman musical while starring in a string of smash Broadway hits. Two months after her mother’s disappearance at sea, ineffectual pursuers wearing antelope masks pursue grieving Daphna and her allies to a hidden valley on Mount Kilimanjaro, where the children find evidence that the school’s great benefactor, digital entrepreneur Ignatius Blatt (think Steve Jobs with the fashion sense of Ronald McDonald) has actually stolen all the wildly popular digital gadgets he claims to have invented himself. Thanks to a spy in Daphna’s circle of friends, Blatt releases contact-lens computers that give him control (through a ring on his finger) over the minds of those who wear them. The shoveled-together climax is of a piece with the rest of this overstuffed, self-conscious tale.
Confused readers will wish that the author had spent a lot more time fitting together the random and extraneous elements here. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-113873-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist.
This is the way Pearl’s world ends: not with a bang but with a scream.
Pearl Moran was born in the Lancaster Avenue branch library and considers it more her home than the apartment she shares with her mother, the circulation librarian. When the head of the library’s beloved statue of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is found to be missing, Pearl’s scream brings the entire neighborhood running. Thus ensues an enchanting plunge into the underbelly of a failing library and a city brimful of secrets. With the help of friends old, uncertainly developing, and new, Pearl must spin story after compelling story in hopes of saving what she loves most. Indeed, that love—of libraries, of books, and most of all of stories—suffuses the entire narrative. Literary references are peppered throughout (clarified with somewhat superfluous footnotes) in addition to a variety of tangential sidebars (the identity of whose writer becomes delightfully clear later on). Pearl is an odd but genuine narrator, possessed of a complex and emotional inner voice warring with a stridently stubborn outer one. An array of endearing supporting characters, coupled with a plot both grounded in stressful reality and uplifted by urban fantasy, lend the story its charm. Both the neighborhood and the library staff are robustly diverse. Pearl herself is biracial; her “long-gone father” was black and her mother is white. Bagley’s spot illustrations both reinforce this and add gentle humor.
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist. (reading list) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6952-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride.
Disaster overtakes a group of sixth graders on a leadership-building white-water rafting trip.
Deep in the Montana wilderness, a dam breaks, and the resultant rush sweeps away both counselors, the rafts, and nearly all the supplies, leaving five disparate preteens stranded in the wilderness far from where they were expected to be. Narrator Daniel is a mild White kid who’s resourceful and good at keeping the peace but given to worrying over his mentally ill father. Deke, also White, is a determined bully, unwilling to work with and relentlessly taunting the others, especially Mia, a Latina, who is a natural leader with a plan. Tony, another White boy, is something of a friendly follower and, unfortunately, attaches himself to Deke while Imani, a reserved African American girl, initially keeps her distance. After the disaster, Deke steals the backpack with the remaining food and runs off with Tony, and the other three resolve to do whatever it takes to get it back, eventually having to confront the dangerous bully. The characters come from a variety of backgrounds but are fairly broadly drawn; still, their breathlessly perilous situation keeps the tale moving briskly forward, with one threatening situation after another believably confronting them. As he did with Wildfire (2019), Newbery Honoree Philbrick has crafted another action tale for young readers that’s impossible to put down.
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64727-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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