Flimsy puzzles plus unsolved mystery equals unsatisfying.
Sixth grade summer school turns into a scary escape room.
The six kids don’t know why they’re the only ones to show up for summer school today, but the empty building is seriously creeping them out. Can they just leave and enjoy the summer day? But something has happened to their class projects: Frankie’s “Leaning Tower of Cheese-a” has vanished, and so has Becca’s heirloom zoetrope, which is her nana’s prize possession. The classroom door slams shut and locks, and a voice over the loudspeaker tells them they need to solve puzzles if they ever want to leave the school or find the zoetrope. They’re herded by clues and shadowy figures around the building, where they’re repeatedly locked into rooms. Their antagonist escalates the challenges the more they solve: First it’s just a locked door with a code, then a chaotically furniture-filled gym, and eventually buckets of fake blood. Chapters alternate between the third-person points of view of Becca and Matt, the two White children. The other four kids—Vietnamese American Kylie; brown-skinned, bilingual Miguel (who has two moms); brown-skinned Danny; and nonbinary, brown-skinned Frankie—are just as central to the storyline, and there’s no clear narrative benefit to the alternating perspectives of the two blond children in particular. No questions are answered before the setup for the sequel. Most puzzles aren’t provided, so readers can’t join the solving process, and detail-oriented middle school readers will notice many incorrect details.
Flimsy puzzles plus unsolved mystery equals unsatisfying. (Suspense. 9-11)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-302507-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits.
Who needs dragons when there are Terrible Lizards to be fought?
Having recklessly boasted to King Arthur and the court that he’d slain 40 dragons, Sir Erec can hardly refuse when Merlin offers him more challenging foes…and so it is that in no time (so to speak), Erec, with bookish Sir Hector, the silent and enigmatic Black Knight, and blustering Sir Bors with his thin but doughty squire, Mel, in tow, are hewing away at fearsome creatures sporting natural armor and weapons every bit as effective as knightly ones. Happily, while all the glorious mashing and bashing leads to awesome feats aplenty—who would suspect that a ravening T. Rex could be decked by a well-placed punch to the jaw?—when the dust settles neither bloodshed nor permanent injury has been dealt to either side. Better yet, not even the stunning revelation that two of the Three Stooges–style bumblers aren’t what they seem (“Anyone else here a girl?”) keeps the questers from developing into a well-knit team capable of repeatedly saving one another’s bacon. Phelan endows the all-white human cast with finely drawn, eloquently expressive faces but otherwise works in a loose, movement-filled style, pitting his clanking crew against an almost nonstop onslaught of toothy monsters in a monochrome mix of single scenes and occasional wordless sequential panels.
Epic—in plot, not length—and as wise and wonderful as Gerald Morris’ Arthurian exploits. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268623-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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