Fans of cliffhanger escapes, captures, recaptures, and surprise revelations are well served.
With Evert in jail, life at Winterborne House feels safe to the parentless children and Gabriel, their informal guardian-cum-superhero; then social worker Gladys Pitts makes a surprise visit.
Unmoved by Sadie’s inventions or Colin’s improvisations, Ms. Pitts is unimpressed. With Smithers and Izzy away, housekeeping is haphazard, and Violet’s outgrown her clothes. School isn’t happening either. Ms. Pitts leaves, promising to return. Later, April spots Gabriel, in Sentinel attire, leaving the hidden chamber where generations of crime-fighting Winterbornes have guarded the Sentinel’s identity, following him to a costume party packed with Sentinel-attired attendees. After April accidentally, and spectacularly, discloses their presence, Gabriel, furious, returns the children to Winterborne House, where the lights are out and an attack or search appears underway by someone in Sentinel garb. Combat ensues between Gabriel and the Fake Sentinel. Wounded, Gabriel disappears. Then Ms. Pitts returns. During the children’s search for Gabriel and flights from the mysterious adults that dominate the narrative, April ponders the meaning of family, concluding that their sibling bond trumps biological ties to relatives who abandoned, neglected, or abused them. Gabriel—orphaned by tragedy—is the cherished heart of their found family. Clouding this message, the hectic plot largely turns on desperate searches for and by long-lost birth relatives whose motives vary. Characters default to White.
Fans of cliffhanger escapes, captures, recaptures, and surprise revelations are well served. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-00440-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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