by Robert Westall & illustrated by John Lawrence ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994
Set in grimy Depression-era industrial cities in northern England, these two holiday tales from a veteran British writer (The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral, 1993, etc.) give young readers something to really cut their teeth on. In ``The Christmas Ghost,'' a young boy receives a warning from a ghost on Christmas Eve that helps him prevent a tragic accident at his father's factory. (The ghost—the plant's late owner, a good- hearted Jewish industrialist—happens to look just like Santa Claus, an intended irony on Westall's part.) The second story, ``The Christmas Cat,'' is narrated by a spunky girl spending a dreary Christmas vacation with her bachelor uncle, an Anglican vicar, and his stern housekeeper. It's a sort of urban version of The Secret Garden in which the girl unlocks her uncle's rigid heart—and gets the tyrannical housekeeper fired—with the aid of a mischievous working-class boy and a pregnant stray cat. The first story gets off to a slow start, with a lot of nostalgic folderol about the traditional trappings of an English Christmas, but once Westall's storytelling kicks into high gear the book is enormously involving. Westall doesn't pander to young readers—they have to be able to translate his Britishisms and have some sense of history- -but the end result is richly detailed, atmospheric, and deeply imagined fiction. (Fiction. 8+)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-31260-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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by Robert Westall & illustrated by William Geldart
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Jasmine Warga ; illustrated by Matt Rockefeller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2022
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep.
A Mars rover discovers that it has a heart to go with its two brains.
Warga follows her cybernetic narrator from first awareness to final resting place—and stony indeed will be any readers who remain unmoved by the journey. Though unable to ask questions of the hazmats (named for their suits) assembling it in a NASA lab, the rover, dubbed Resilience by an Ohio sixth grader, gets its first inklings of human feelings from two workers who talk to it, play it music, and write its pleasingly bug-free code. Other machines (even chatty cellphones) reject the notion that there’s any real value to emotions. But the longer those conversations go, the more human many start sounding, particularly after Res lands in Mars’ Jezero Crater and, with help from Fly, a comically excitable drone, and bossy satellite Guardian, sets off on twin missions to look for evidence of life and see if an older, silenced rover can be brought back online. Along with giving her characters, human and otherwise, distinct voices and engaging personalities, the author quietly builds solid relationships (it’s hardly a surprise when, after Fly is downed in a dust storm, Res trundles heroically to the rescue in defiance of orders) on the way to rest and joyful reunions years later. A subplot involving brown-skinned, Arabic-speaking NASA coder Rania unfolds through her daughter Sophia’s letters to Res.
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep. (afterword, resources) (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311392-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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