A richly detailed, immersive read.
In this sequel to The Lost Scroll of the Physician (2020), the spy they’ve freed leads the young scribes across the Egyptian desert to rescue pharaoh’s daughter from the Hyksos chieftain’s stronghold.
If freeing and following Pepi is risky, remaining in Thebes spells certain death for Sesha, Paser, and Reb. Pepi earns their trust on the hazardous journey where dangers include lethal quicksand and a violent sandstorm. Reuniting with Princess Merat brings new dangers; the chieftain, intending to marry Merat immediately, insists Sesha, 13, be married as well, requiring a quick-thinking ruse. Assisting the venerable Hyksos physician, Sesha notices disconcerting similarities and connections between Hyksos culture and her own: They pray to the same gods and sing their children the same lullabies. The previously disparaging Thebans are shocked to find Hyksos technology superior, admiring the way they cast bronze and use horse-drawn chariots. As famine threatens Egypt, with war all but inevitable, Sesha discovers a passion for peace as deep as her commitment to healing. From her first glimpse of a horse to setting a broken leg, Sesha’s reactions are convincing. This sequel also adds depth to secondary characters (who could use still more). When the action-packed plot threatens to veer out of control, the evocative settings and vivid, quotidian observations of life 3,500 years ago reanchor it. The cliffhanger ending does its job.
A richly detailed, immersive read. (Historical adventure. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4597-4432-5
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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