by Andri Snaer Magnason & illustrated by Áslaug Jónsdóttir & translated by Julian Meldon D'Arcy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2012
A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction...
A traveling salesman tricks an island of innocent, ageless children into selling their most valuable possession for fun and games in this undoubtedly metaphorical tale.
When Gleesome Goodday—looking in the illustrations like an evil clown clad in a Hawaiian shirt—emerges from his rocket ship promising to make everyone’s sweetest dreams come true, Brimir, Hulda and the rest of the children happily exchange percentages of their “youth” for such benefits as the ability to fly and dirt-proof coatings of Teflon. In no time (literally, as Goodday also nails the sun into the sky), the children have abandoned their previously idyllic lives to learn about commerce, ownership, democratic politics and making bombs. It’s all a laugh riot until Brimir and Hulda discover that all the children and animals on the other side of their world are pining away in perpetual darkness and notice that they themselves and all their playmates have gone gray. No worries, though: by abruptly turning Goodday into a fool who is easily tricked into freeing the Sun and emptying his tanks of hoarded Youth, the Icelandic author engineers a facile happy ending.
A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction add bits of savor to an otherwise bland import with a cautionary message that is, at best, vague. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60980-428-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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by Andri Snaer Magnason ; translated by Bjorg Arnadottir & Andrew Cauthery
by Andy Marino ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Andy Marino
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by Andy Marino
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by Andy Marino
by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2022
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists.
Princess Grace of Merryland needs rescuing again, forcing two young knights-in-training to face a series of challenges, from hungry cave sharks to a minotaur named Chad.
Actually, Princess Grace is perfectly capable of rescuing herself—again: see Once Upon a Tim (2022)—except that this time, kidnappers have stashed her in a room that’s locked and bolted on the outside…and in the middle of a maze billed, supposedly, as “the most complex and dastardly labyrinth in the world.” So it is that former peasants Tim and his more capable friend Bull—otherwise known as Belinda when she’s not disguised as a boy—plunge into a mess of dark and bewildering tunnels, armed with a ball of twine provided by the surprisingly sapient village idiot Ferkle, to face a series of deadly threats…though the most legendary of all turns out to be an amiable monster with the body of a bull and the head of, well, a dude. Throughout Gibbs’ lighthearted, laugh-out-loud tale, Curtis supplies proper notes of farce or stark terror as appropriate in flurries of line drawings that present most of the humans and the monsters with human features as White, though Belinda appears to present as Black. Along the way, Tim adds educational value to his narrative by flagging and then pausing to define vocabulary-building words like laborious and vexing.
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9928-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Anjan Sarkar
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Stacy Curtis
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