A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A go-down-easy book that provides both lightweight character building and several comical turns.
A sixth-grader and his live-in ghost further cement their friendship while bootstrapping each other toward better social skills in this airy sequel to Zero to Hero (2012).
This time the ghost takes center stage. Dead teen and compulsive prankster Hoover “the Hoove” Porterhouse has but one last chance to earn a passing mark from Higher-Ups in Helping Others and Responsibility to be set free to realize his life- (and death-) long dream of visiting every Major League ballpark in the country. When an upcoming school assignment that requires showing some personal skill sends his shy, breathing buddy Billy Broccoli into a terrified tizzy, the Hoove’s “help” with a fake mind-reading act boosts Billy’s public status from outsider to awesome. Carrying its messages lightly, the tale ultimately leaves the Hoove with better impulse control even as it moves Billy to twin realizations that cheating is neither good for building self-respect nor the best way to make friends. Highlights include a pair of misty Field of Dreams–style exchanges with the one-and-only Yogi “You can observe a lot by watching” Berra. The cast is thoroughly likable (even the requisite bully will earn reader sympathy, if only for being so gormless).
A go-down-easy book that provides both lightweight character building and several comical turns. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-29888-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An uncomplicated but fervent and timely show of support.
A class assignment blossoms into friendship as a fourth-grade (later fifth-) Californian showers a young soldier stationed in Afghanistan with letters, e-mail messages and postcards.
Scotto supplies only chatty Felix’s side of the continuing correspondence, though the general drift of the replies from his new buddy Lt. Marcus Greene is easy enough to catch. In nearly daily missives, Felix queries his pen pal about what soldiers do while detailing his own interests, teachers, town, hard-working Filipino American parents (and their reactions when his restless big brother enlists) and his newfound delight in taking snapshots. Several of these, along with handmade picture postcards, are reproduced in Williams’ evocative drawings. He also charts emotional ups and downs, notably after Felix brings a sudden end to years of harassment by punching a bully in the nose and in the wake of news that Greene has been hospitalized with a serious wound. In the end Greene remains a shadowy stand-in for any soldier, while Felix comes across clearly as an everylad modeling a high level of respect for what his adopted pal is doing, as well as the anxiety common to any family who has a member in today’s armed forces.
An uncomplicated but fervent and timely show of support. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9837243-6-0
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Midlandia Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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