This gleefully macabre tale hints at a series with great potential.
This middle-grade thriller finds a brother and sister tangling with an impossibly powerful coin and a gruesome stalker.
Twelve-year-old RJ walks with his younger sister one summer evening. Shelly, who’s 10, is much braver than her brother. She stops to examine something in front of a decrepit, “castle-like house” at the end of their cul-de-sac. Behind the house is a wooded cliff and a lake, in which their father, a fisherman, recently disappeared. Shelly, a collector of weird things, picks up a coin and pockets it. As they walk, she suddenly screams in pain: “The coin—my leg!” RJ then hears a strange voice whisper, “Throw it in the lake.” After he throws the coin as far onto the property as possible, Shelly reveals she was kidding. They walk home, and RJ sees what look like red eyes near the castle. Later, RJ notices a scraggly man with a sharp cane, first at the grocery store, then at his and Shelly’s lemonade stand. This is the Impaler, whose presence terrifies RJ while Mom attends an award ceremony with Ed, her scientist boyfriend. Worse, the coin reappears, this time causing bizarre sores and strange evil urges in the normally timid RJ. Now he’s determined to banish the coin to the lake. Crantz begins a series, in the vein of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books, with this chilling blend of mystery and SF. Readers have plenty to juggle early on, primarily the true fate of the siblings’ father. The kids’ exploration of the horrid house kicks off the narrative’s second half. A few characters aren’t who they seem to be, and younger audiences will learn not to judge people by their appearances. The author effectively offers indelible images, like the Impaler, who’s “mangy and dirty like a coyote, but moved like a squid lost on land.” While the danger of the coin is entertaining, Crantz lays impressive groundwork for the series by introducing “Project: FrightVision,” which mentions other cursed objects and explains the whereabouts of Wally Swanson, a missing neighborhood child. Also noteworthy is RJ’s love of video games, which he can’t play while having his own adventures.
This gleefully macabre tale hints at a series with great potential.Pub Date: April 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-253849-7
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A candid and powerful reckoning of history.
Summer is off to a terrible start for 12-year old African-American Candice Miller.
Six months after her parents’ divorce, Candice and her mother leave Atlanta to spend the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, at her grandmother’s old house. When her grandmother Abigail passed two years ago, in 2015, Candice and her mother struggled to move on. Now, without any friends, a computer, cellphone, or her grandmother, Candice suffers immense loneliness and boredom. When she starts rummaging through the attic and stumbles upon a box of her grandmother’s belongings, she discovers an old letter that details a mysterious fortune buried in Lambert and that asks Abigail to find the treasure. After Candice befriends the shy, bookish African-American kid next door, 11-year-old Brandon Jones, the pair set off investigating the clues. Each new revelation uncovers a long history of racism and tension in the small town and how one family threatened the black/white status quo. Johnson’s latest novel holds racism firmly in the light. Candice and Brandon discover the joys and terrors of the reality of being African-American in the 1950s. Without sugarcoating facts or dousing it in post-racial varnish, the narrative lets the children absorb and reflect on their shared history. The town of Lambert brims with intrigue, keeping readers entranced until the very last page.
A candid and powerful reckoning of history. (Historical mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-94617-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
PROFILES
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans.
Only children, rejoice! A cozy mystery just for you! (People with siblings will probably enjoy it too.)
Debut novelist Cornett introduces the One and Onlys, a trio of mystery-solving only kids: Gloria Longshanks “Shanks” Hill, Alexander “Peephole” Calloway, and narrator Paul (alas, no nickname) Marconi. The trio has a knack for finding and solving low-level mysteries, but they come up against a true head-scratcher when the yard of a resident of their small town is covered in rubber ducks overnight. Working ahead of Officer Portnoy, who’s a little on the slow side, can Paul, Shanks, and Peephole solve the mystery? Cornett has a lot of fun with this adventure, dropping additional side mysteries, a subplot about small businesses, big corporations, and economics, and a town’s love of bratwurst into the mix. Most importantly, he plays fair with the clues throughout, allowing astute readers to potentially solve the case ahead of the trio. The tone and mystery are perfect for younger readers who want to test their detective skills but are put off by anything scary or gory. The pacing would serve well for chapter-by-chapter read-alouds. If there are any quibbles, it’s the lack of diversity of the cast, as it defaults white. Diversity exists in small towns, and this one is crying out for more. Hopefully a sequel will introduce additional faces.
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-3003-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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