Another entertaining foray into science both mad and real; new readers should start with the opener, though, to make sense...
Closing a comical series’ first story arc, America’s two greatest inventors square off in a death match over the Emperor Napoléon’s scheme to conquer the world…with science.
Well, science of a sort. To the electrically preserved Franklin and his modern young cohorts Victor, Scott and Jaime, there’s something fishy about the “Infinity Bulbs” that the strangely familiar “Ed Thomason” is passing out for free. Their suspicions are confirmed by the discovery of a gigantic, almost-complete “harmonic supertransmitter” in the bowels of the Infinity Unlimited factory—a device that, at the command of the megalomaniac Emperor, will turn everyone within reach of an Infinity Bulb into an obedient zombie. Tuxbury and McElligott liberally endow their tale with patent drawings, circuit and other diagrams, and like techno eye candy as well as such general silliness as a wizened Bad Guy who gets around in an ornately decorated bathtub. It spins through melodramatic twists and sudden reversals of fortune to an appropriately explosive climax that puts Ben out of action but (probably) leaves Napoléon at large for future episodes.
Another entertaining foray into science both mad and real; new readers should start with the opener, though, to make sense of it all. (Sci-fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25481-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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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