Fans will be over the moon, a phrase that here means exceedingly pleased.
Can an apprentice in a certain secret organization keep his associates safe and save a dying town—or is that one of the wrong questions?
Someone has set fire to Birnbaum’s Sheep Barn, a local business, and Lemony Snicket’s clueless chaperone, S. Theodora Markson, takes the case. But the client is the heretofore unheard-of department of education of Stain’d-by-the-Sea (a town with only one school). Snicket strongly suspects that the villain Hangfire is behind the arson; when local librarian Dashiell Qwerty is framed for the crime, Snicket is certain his suspicions are correct. But why would Hangfire burn down a sheep barn? After the school burns, Lemony Snicket and his young associates plot to save Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s children and the rest of its structures from Hangfire and the total numbskullery of the adult population. Some questions are answered, and still more are posed in Lemony Snicket (the author)’s third All the Wrong Questions tale. Lemony Snicket (the character) continues to worry about the sister he left in the city (she has now been arrested) and whether he can save (and in some cases trust) his young associates. Seth returns to add occasional spooky, intriguing bicolor illustrations. Linguistic play and literary allusions abound in this smart, slyly humorous noir thriller.
Fans will be over the moon, a phrase that here means exceedingly pleased. (Mystery. 8-14)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-12306-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2014
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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