by Adam Crozier ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2022
A warmhearted and engaging tale of time travel and friendship.
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In this SF adventure for middle-grade readers, some resourceful tweens hop through time as they try to return home while striving to save Earth from an alien invasion.
Twelve-year-old Nic Walker is miserable about his parents’ decision to move from their Southern California home to San Jose, far away from his best friends, Sophia and Tate. Forlorn and sullen, he is riding his bike to visit his childhood pals for the last time when the afternoon is shattered by a “black saucer-shaped aircraft” falling from the sky, seemingly in combat with a “gigantic crystal.” As both vessels appear to crash in the hills, Nic races to get Tate, a video game whiz who wants to be a pilot, and Sophia, a science nerd who likes to build robots. Together, the three go on one last adventure to investigate the downed spacecraft. They find the crystal ship first and catch sight of military personnel carrying the body of “a massive humanoid reptile, twice the size of a human.” The second vessel appears to be of human design and conceals an even greater mystery: a time machine. The friends cannot resist a short trip into the future, where they meet Nadezda Wright, who is attempting to prevent a past alien invasion of Earth, and her granddaughter, Zoe, who is craving pals her own age. The travelers also receive some bad news. The time machine can only take them to the future, so their return to their own time is likely to be challenging. Crozier’s tale of a time-travel quest is original and exhilarating, and his young heroes are appealingly scrappy and inventive. The future landscapes they travel as they bounce through time are plausibly imagined, and the fight scenes are blessedly free of death and gore. If it is not quite believable that Dungeons & Dragons and space pilot video games have prepared the friends for everything they have to do, from flying spaceships at sub–light speed to breaking into an alien prison, the rollicking fun will make it easy for readers to suspend disbelief.
A warmhearted and engaging tale of time travel and friendship.Pub Date: July 7, 2022
ISBN: 9798986465616
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Annie Matthew ; developed by Kobe Bryant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 24, 2021
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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by Annie Matthew ; developed by Kobe Bryant
by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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by Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Julie Morstad
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by Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Sophie Blackall
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