Backmatter on Burroughs and Tarzan may lead new readers to the classics.
On the 100th anniversary of his creation, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, returns in updated adventures.
While Tarzan leads his ape family, the Mangani, in search of a better food supply, Jane, her doctor father and the other denizens of the illegal logging camp Karibu Mji deal with a new face: Lord William Greystoke. Ostensibly, he’s in the Congolese jungle to see to his family interests and search for his lost cousin. That cousin may be Tarzan, who is rumored to have survived the plane crash that killed his parents years ago and subsequently been raised by apes. Of course, Greystoke has darker plans. Firstly, he wants to find the downed plane and the research notes that will lead him to the lost city of Opar, thought to be the site of mines rich in the rare mineral coltan. He may also be there to ensure Tarzan doesn’t return to claim his rightful title of Lord Greystoke. Jane and her friend Robbie escape Greystoke’s clutches to warn Tarzan, but the whole party ends up in danger thanks to a mad queen, her man-eating apes and an active volcano. British author Briggs’ third updated tale features modern tech and diction and a Jane who’s no damsel in distress in a believable (enough) and at-times thrilling jungle adventure.
Backmatter on Burroughs and Tarzan may lead new readers to the classics. (Adventure. 12 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0014-6
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch.
A Jewish girl joins up with Polish resistance groups to fight for her people against the evils of the Holocaust.
Chaya Lindner is forcibly separated from her family when they are consigned to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. The 16-year-old is taken in by the leaders of Akiva, a fledgling Jewish resistance group that offers her the opportunity to become a courier, using her fair coloring to pass for Polish and sneak into ghettos to smuggle in supplies and information. Chaya’s missions quickly become more dangerous, taking her on a perilous journey from a disastrous mission in Krakow to the ghastly ghetto of Lodz and eventually to Warsaw to aid the Jews there in their gathering uprising inside the walls of the ghetto. Through it all, she is partnered with a secretive young girl whom she is reluctant to trust. The trajectory of the narrative skews toward the sensational, highlighting moments of resistance via cinematic action sequences but not pausing to linger on the emotional toll of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Younger readers without sufficient historical knowledge may not appreciate the gravity of the events depicted. The principal characters lack depth, and their actions and the situations they find themselves in often require too much suspension of disbelief to pass for realism.
Sensitive subject matter that could have benefited from a subtler, more sober touch. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-14847-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
A solid genre outing.
In the near future, an incarcerated teen with a reputation for escape attempts is moved to a new, maximum-security facility called the Rig, an oil-drilling platform in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, now converted to use as a prison.
Fifteen-year-old William Drake is a likable, tough-talking narrator who hails from London, the son of an African-American father and a Polish mother. True to hard-boiled type, Drake keeps to himself and resists making friends, even as he makes enemies of the worst baddies by defending weaker kids from them and is won over by the Rig's kindly psychologist, Dr. Lambros. Flavoring the third-person narration with some great one-liners (“She had the voice of a lifelong smoker thrown in a blender”), Ducie takes his time setting the stage for the action-packed second half of the novel, with Drake carefully plotting an escape that involves the skills of his hacker cellmate, Tristan, and the knowledge of Irene, a fellow prisoner who hints at a conspiracy that eventually blows up in their faces. All the elements of a great thriller are here—sinister villains, a stoic hero with a heart of gold, even mutated sharks. If some of these details seem a bit familiar to seasoned action-adventure fans, there is still plenty to keep them engaged, and the open-ended conclusion suggests there may be more to come.
A solid genre outing. (Thriller. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-50311-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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