Assured and atmospheric: a winner.
A young girl, a pet rabbit, a best friend, a postwar London setting, and a puzzling mystery animate and entertain in Eagle’s latest.
Caro Monday, 12, lives in London with her mother, Jacinta, who’s famous for her whistling, and her second mum, Jacinta’s partner, Veronica “Ronnie” Rudd, who owns the pub where they live. Caro is happy. She has her white-and-ginger rabbit, His Nibs; her best friend, Horace Braithwaite, who aspires to be the next Yves Saint Laurent; and the Rubbles, an abandoned area that’s “half bomb site, half junkyard, full of stuff to build with, and no grown-ups to bother you.” The two are outsiders—white-presenting Caro for having two mums and Horace for being Black and Bajan. But when Jacinta fails to return from an overseas whistling tour (not the first time she’s gone missing) and Ronnie’s sister up north needs help, Caro ends up staying with the detested Gam, or Great-Aunt Mary, who raised Jacinta until she ran away at 16. Arriving at Gam’s house with her few possessions, Caro finds the imperious Gam as awful as she’d imagined. While unpacking, Caro discovers a small painting of a bird hidden in Mum’s old suitcase—a painting that turns out to be by an old master, and stolen to boot. 1950s London comes to life in the evocative descriptions and Rioux’s utterly charming, full-page illustrations. The twisty plot and taut, assured writing deliver a story that immediately engages.
Assured and atmospheric: a winner. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781536242683
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
