At once an epic journey toward self-discovery and a wonderfully entertaining yarn.
An ancient hero’s feats and foibles echo through a modern middle schooler’s life…as they do, for those who can see.
Actually, 12-year-old Hercules can see better than most as he walks each morning through his Cape Cod neighborhood to a dune to watch the glorious sunrise and bid hello to his parents—killed a year and a half before in a traffic collision. What he doesn’t see, at least at the outset, is how he’s going to manage a school assignment that requires him to find personal parallels to each of the labors of (as he puts it) “Hercules the Myth.” Schmidt assembles a strong, perceptive supporting cast, including a girlfriend; older brother Achilles’ fiancee, probably, no, definitely a vampire; a “wicked cool dog”; and a legion of teachers led by the hard-nosed ex-Marine who dishes out that seemingly impossible assignment. The book covers an eventful year marked by the endless chores required to keep the family’s garden nursery going and an equally relentless tide of emergencies, rescues, and terrifying encounters with feral cats and coyotes. Hercules’ eye-rolling “Oh boy oh boy” becomes as much a running punchline as a caustic comment. It’s all punctuated by moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity, emotionally enriched by quiet, incisive bonding, and chock-full of insights about how old stories continue to speak to human nature and character, showing that Schmidt remains at the top of his game. Main characters read White.
At once an epic journey toward self-discovery and a wonderfully entertaining yarn. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780358659631
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
PROFILES
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
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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