Nonstop action, delivered with a wink.
A squad of young crime fighters sniff out art thieves and hidden treasure in this second round of high-tech, pastry-fueled sleuthing.
Challenges practically drop into the laps of Olive Cobin Zang and her four companion Misfits, even as a string of ominous messages a worried classmate receives lead to a tangle of mysteries. They involve old tales of a lost ship filled with gold and valuable Chinese artifacts, oddly localized earthquakes linked to bank and other heists, and hints that treasures in a San Francisco art museum are being surreptitiously switched out for fakes. In an urgently paced plot delivered with tongue-in-cheek twists aplenty, Yee sends her eager investigators scurrying into crime scenes and hidden rooms, with occasional quick breaks to plan or compare notes over treats from the Butter Bakery. A climactic Mission: Impossible–style museum break-in requires all of Olive’s unusual acrobatics skills. The classic denouement she delivers dressed (appropriately) as Miss Marple leads to a brief high-speed chase as a culprit tries to escape in an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Readers are treated to a whirl of revelations and golden discoveries, and throughout they’ll be swept along, both by the breathlessly paced developments and by the individually awkward but collectively unstoppable team leading the racially diverse cast. Final art not seen.
Nonstop action, delivered with a wink. (agent profiles, gadget profiles) (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780593564226
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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
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
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