Eerie and icky but benign both in specter and theme.
A campfire tale with a memorably macabre ghost.
Chupeco assembles a new Midnight Society to gather around the campfire for this tie-in to the TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark? and cleverly fashions a spooky yarn with themes that apply directly to the frame story. Levi, the new kid in middle school, gets a hostile reception from rival Blake, who’s trying out for the same position on the basketball team. Levi auditions to join the society with a story about Zane and Garrett, two like rivals who, after repeated visitations from the locally famous ghost of a woman with no lower jaw, find themselves allied in uncovering a 200-year-old mystery involving three vanished and presumably murdered orphaned children. Along with plenty of weird noises, creepy manifestations, and old books and bones unexpectedly revealed, the author adds extra measures of grossness by casting Garrett as the child of undertakers whom Zane watches carrying out their explicitly described work. (They also truck in Mr. Vink, an enigmatic recurring character on the show, for a guest appearance.) Nonetheless, come an end to the lurid dreams and screams, the ghost turns out to be benevolent for all her appearance, and like Zane and Garrett, Levi and Blake wind up on the road to friendship, differences resolved. One society member is nonbinary; Garrett’s dad is cued Filipino, and other cast members are minimally described.
Eerie and icky but benign both in specter and theme. (Paranormal. 9-13)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781419763496
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An engrossing caper with a cerebral tilt.
Young sleuths tackle a decidedly cold case when a hurricane exposes remains that have been buried for over half a century in this sequel to The Sherlock Society (2024).
Budding detectives Alex, Zoe, Lina, and Yadi embark on another investigation in Miami. After Hurricane Clyde makes landfall, devastating the area and causing widespread flooding, a mystery comes to light: The skeleton of bell captain Ignacio Gonzalez, who worked at the Moroccan Hotel, appears. He was the prime suspect in the disappearance of a trove of gems and art stolen from the hotel during Hurricane Cleo in 1964; no one had seen him since the theft. But now it’s abundantly clear that the real culprit has yet to be identified—and the Sherlock Society, with help from the retired journalist grandpa of siblings Alex and Zoe, springs into action. Chapters set in 1964 and information on hurricanes and how to prepare for them set the stage. Various associates, including a newly recruited gaggle of retired federal agents from an assisted-living facility, participate in fascinating rounds of assembling evidence, reconstructing events, making logical connections, testing theories, and evaluating potential suspects. Once he gets readers past the long setup, Ponti tracks the case’s twisting course with impressive speed and fluency before reaching a satisfying closure. Yadi is cued Latine, and the other members of the society read white.
An engrossing caper with a cerebral tilt. (map) (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781665932561
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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