A cuddly, intelligent rodent becomes the hero of a sports tale that oozes charm.
A middle-grade novel focuses on a boy, his pet rat, and a shared love of baseball.
Lucky is one lucky rat. Rescued by a woman with a 10-year-old boy named Jack, he lives a fairly stress-free life with his brother, Gus-Gus, as household pets. The rats can talk to each other, having conversations that humans only hear as squeaks. When baseball season starts, Jack introduces them to baseball on TV, and Lucky loves it. It gets even better when Jack starts Little League, bringing Lucky to the games with him. There, Lucky is befriended by Fred, a dog who explains the rules of baseball to him. Lucky, it seems, has found his calling, becoming the team mascot and soon giving Jack and his fellow players signals from the sidelines. This leads Jack’s team, the Bulldogs, to victory over the Devil Rays, its archenemies. It also causes Danny, one of the Devil Rays’ players, to threaten Lucky, with the boy subsequently throwing a baseball and injuring the little rat. Soon, Lucky is on the mend and back at the baseball field, where Jack and his friends Dayna and Trevor lecture Danny about hurting helpless animals. In a climactic game, the Bulldogs again face the Devil Rays. The Goldenbergs, a mother-and-son team, have concocted a sweet tale of friendship not only among three wiser-than-their-years kids, but also between Jack and his two pet rodents. There are some nice descriptions throughout the book—Jack “smelled of candy, French fries, and home,” says Lucky in one captivating passage—and Cutler’s simple illustrations at the beginning of each chapter help draw a picture of the clever rat and his antics. There are some moments when Jack and his friends seem more mature than 10-year-old kids would be. For instance, when Trevor and Dayna come to visit after Lucky is injured, they bring doughnuts. “We come bearing gifts,” Dayna says, a rather grown-up phrase for someone her age. But that’s a minor quibble. This is a largely delightful story about children and pets with a few life lessons thrown in for good measure.
A cuddly, intelligent rodent becomes the hero of a sports tale that oozes charm.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2022
ISBN: 9781646638598
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
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