A fantastical blend of quirky characters and goofy adventures.
Olive’s move to a new school leads to friends, adventures, and greater self-confidence in this series opener.
Invisible at school and forgotten by her distracted parents, 12-year-old Olive Cobin Zang is lonely and drifting. Her only source of solace is memories of her loving grandmother’s wise words. So, when Olive’s parents transfer her to the Reforming Arts School, a Bay Area boarding school located in a former prison, she is ambivalent but curious. The school’s unusual approach includes both individual and group placement auditions. These challenges reward often-overlooked skills that Olive and four other idiosyncratic new students turn out to embody: creativity, teamwork, and reasoning. The new pod of five coalesces, exuberant upon learning that they will “join an elite force of specially trained operatives” and become the youngest group ever to go undercover and bring fresh ideas to solving crime. The self-styled Misfits have finally found their calling, but will it last? A crisis is unfolding: The villainous Bling King could keep the school’s main benefactor from attending the annual fundraiser, threatening the school’s existence as well as the Misfits’ own ambitions and newfound feelings of sanctuary. The straightforward storyline has more telling than showing, making it accessible to younger and reluctant readers. Readers will delight in the cartoonlike worldbuilding, zany capers, and plentiful and expressive illustrations. Olive is Chinese American and white; there’s racial diversity among the remaining cast.
A fantastical blend of quirky characters and goofy adventures. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781984830296
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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