This gripping, suspenseful read with compelling characters and a spellbinding setting lures readers into the deep-cold night...
After he moves to Dawson, Yukon, with Stephanie, his troubled mother, Edgar bonds with an elderly dog and remakes his connection to the world.
When they broke up, Stephanie’s ex gave Edgar a camera. Hours into their Dawson housesitting gig, she’s flirting with their new neighbor Ceese, while his friendly daughter, Caroline, introduces Edgar to Benjamin, an infirm Newfoundland, age 14. Living with an unstable, alcoholic parent has made Edgar both passive and fearfully observant. He’s seen her use her looks and charisma to attract the partnered men she fancies before she flees with Edgar to start over. Edgar, almost 12, is determined to keep her from claiming Ceese, whose long-standing girlfriend he admires. Drawn to the Yukon’s icy, implacable beauty—and immersed in Benjamin’s smelly but endearing reality—Edgar identifies with the dog in Jack London’s iconic story “To Build a Fire.” As Benjamin speaks to him, then understands him, Edgar’s words sound like barking to humans though he still writes in English. With heightened senses and his camera he tracks his out-of-control mother, whom he sees as a predator, and makes desperate efforts to warn the preyed upon. Cumyn deliberately builds this memorable world, easing readers into their suspension of disbelief as Edgar’s engagement with Benjamin grows. Far from a mere survival tale, this is a psychological thriller for sophisticated middle-grade readers. Edgar and his mother present white; Ceese and Caroline have brown skin.
This gripping, suspenseful read with compelling characters and a spellbinding setting lures readers into the deep-cold night even as they long for a life-affirming sunrise. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-9752-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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