Mystery lovers will be perplexed, but fans of the series will line up for the next book, and their grandparents will hope it...
This mystery should come with sheet music and a dance chart.
A ghost is haunting the girls’ bathroom at Pine Lake Academy, but that isn’t the interesting part of the story. The interesting thing is that she’s singing “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Anyone who drinks the water ends up possessed, and even a manly young detective like Raf Hernandez finds himself saying, “How I love the Turkey Trot! But Auntie says the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear are vulgar and will corrupt today’s youth.” Some authors might stop at that level of quirkiness, but Robbins gets wilder and more inventive as the story goes on—even in a book with a talking dog in the first chapter. In Chapter 4, to solve the mystery, the dog allows himself to be possessed by not one, but two ghosts, who can’t stop arguing. Haunted plumbing doesn’t scare him. “Us dogs always drink from toilet bowls,” he says. Not every page contains a surprise. The conclusion is oddly mundane; it has to do with the disposition of a household object. But then, the mystery is beside the point. Who needs detective work when an entire ghostly orchestra shows up for the final chapter?
Mystery lovers will be perplexed, but fans of the series will line up for the next book, and their grandparents will hope it comes with a vinyl record. (Graphic mystery. 9-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8225-9161-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate.
Toxic waste dumped in the Everglades gives a quartet of middle school sleuths their first case.
Leading Carl Hiaasen fans over familiar ground, Ponti pitches 12-year-old Alex Sherlock and his 13-year-old sister, Zoe, with school friends Lina and Yadi as sidekicks, into a summer caper. It all begins with the hunt for a supposed fortune buried decades ago by Al Capone, culminates in a narrow escape from an exploding yacht, and ultimately exposes a smooth-talking bad actor shady enough to bring in even federal authorities. As the kids’ live-in Grandpa, a retired investigative reporter, delivers pointers on how to conduct interviews and sift evidence while grandly driving them around South Florida in his classic Cadillac, Roberta, the budding detectives display sharp wits, eyes, and negotiating skills. The last come in particularly useful when they’re dealing with their lawyer…who’s also their mom. Both the plot and the chain of evidence take logical courses, and since Dad is a marine biologist and Lina’s a recent transplant from Wyoming, Ponti is able to use their dialogue to highlight the local culture and larger ecological issues. Main characters present white, apart from tech wiz Yadi, who is cued Latine.
An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781665932530
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
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