No sooner have St. Veronica’s seventh-grade sleuths Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca and Leigh Ann solved the perplexing case of The Ring of Rocamadour (2009) than Sister Bernadette challenges them to find a mysterious intruder who’s cleaning and redecorating the school. Simultaneously, Margaret receives a strange letter inviting her to figure out a series of cryptic clues leading to a missing violin stolen in 1959. Meanwhile, a rare violin vanishes from their friend Mr. Chernofsky’s shop, triggering another mystery. The four feisty detectives use teamwork, brains and aplomb to crack all three mysteries in their Upper East Side neighborhood while juggling homework, starting up a band called The Blazers and outwitting a snarky classmate. Sophie’s chatty first-person, present-tense banter sets a lighthearted tone for their serious code breaking and problem solving, while readers are encouraged to help unravel the puzzles and sample the brainteasers. As they dart from clue to clue, the red blazer gals feel and act like real tweens while tackling everything that comes their way with logic, humor and refreshing savoir faire. (appendix with solution for final logic problem) (Mystery. 8-12)
Pub Date: June 8, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-86103-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Remarking that ``nothing about the weather is very simple,'' Simon goes on to describe how the sun, atmosphere, earth's rotation, ground cover, altitude, pollution, and other factors influence it; briefly, he also tells how weather balloons gather information. Even for this outstanding author, it's a tough, complex topic, and he's not entirely successful in simplifying it; moreover, the import of the striking uncaptioned color photos here isn't always clear. One passage—``Cumulus clouds sometimes build up into towering masses called cumulus congestus, or swelling cumulus, which may turn into cumulonimbus clouds''—is superimposed on a blue-gray, cloud-covered landscape. But which kind of clouds are these? Another photo, in blue-black and white, shows what might be precipitation in the upper atmosphere, or rain falling on a darkened landscape, or...? Generally competent and certainly attractive, but not Simon's best. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-10546-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
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