Though not yet born in 2001, the intended audience will come away feeling more connected to the tragedy and aware of its...
A terrified 11-year-old gets an “extremely loud and incredibly close” view of the World Trade Center attacks in this disaster series’ latest entry.
Thoroughly bummed at having to drop football in the wake of his third concussion, Lucas cuts school for the lower Manhattan firehouse where beloved “Uncle” Benny—his firefighter father’s colleague and closest friend—is stationed. He arrives just as the first plane does, and hearing that all firefighters have been summoned to the scene, he sets out to find Benny and his dad. Supplemented by occasional staid but realistic scenes from Dawson, Tarshis effectively captures not only the sequence of events and the pervasive confusion and shock as the catastrophe develops, but also its gargantuan scale. Though the author plays with readers' sympathies in the final chapter with a needless red herring, in general she crafts a dramatic, emotionally intense tale that takes account of 9/11’s physical and emotional costs—short- and long-term—while ending on an upward beat.
Though not yet born in 2001, the intended audience will come away feeling more connected to the tragedy and aware of its historical significance. (afterword, timeline) (Historical fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-20693-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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