A first-rate whodunit, reminiscent of a game of Clue and terrific preparation for the works of Agatha Christie.
Wells and Wong return in a classic country-estate mystery.
Spending their April break at Fallingford, Daisy’s stately (but run-down) family home, schoolgirls Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong become detectives again when an unpleasant friend of Daisy’s mother is murdered there. Mr. Curtis is a stranger, ostensibly invited for Daisy’s 14th birthday party. He’s clearly more interested in the family’s valuable antiques, and Daisy’s mother, Lady Hastings, is inappropriately interested in him. When he’s fatally poisoned after drinking his tea, many people have motives, but the girls (and two school friends invited for the occasion) quickly narrow the list. All their potential suspects are members of Daisy’s own family. This is difficult for the president of the Detective Society, but she continues to gamely direct its proceedings. Hazel serves as scribe and narrator. Besides recording their activities, she supplies her own observations, including comparisons of her wealthy Chinese family’s home in Hong Kong with this shabbier one, and her feelings about looking and being different from Daisy and her white family. Published in England in 2015 as Arsenic for Tea, this well-crafted and entertaining detective story, a stand-alone sequel to Murder Is Bad Manners (2014), is solidly set in a fading world of 1930s minor nobility and supported by a cast list and map.
A first-rate whodunit, reminiscent of a game of Clue and terrific preparation for the works of Agatha Christie. (Historical mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2215-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
An outstanding new edition of this popular modern classic (Newbery Award, 1961), with an introduction by Zena Sutherland and...
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0-395-53680-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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