The unwieldy plot twists and turns, always creating new questions, but it leaves an uncomfortably large aperture—an...
Twelve-year-old Hannah Silver, armed solely with some newfound knowledge and her three imaginary friends, crosses a forbidden threshold to try to find the soul of her recently, unexpectedly deceased—likely murdered—mother.
During the same week in which she begins public school after years of home schooling, Hannah learns that two mysterious visitors to her and her mother’s solitary lighthouse existence are returned-from-the-dead Watchers and that she and her mother are Guardians: humans charged with guarding the only door from the world of the living to the city of the dead. Shortly after the visit, Hannah finds her mother’s corpse and, grief-stricken, enters the city of the dead. Once there, she engages in a thrill-a-minute fantasy adventure, touring surreal, sometimes–high-tech neighborhoods populated by souls working toward something called Ascension—think Dante’s circles as written by J.K. Rowling. The short chapters end with suspenseful hooks to keep pages turning, and the pace accelerates exponentially. The third-person-omniscient storytelling, coupled with plenty of humor, keeps the darker implications of the tale at bay. Hannah’s new friends in the afterlife are especially delightful—particularly artistic Stefan, with his pet chameleon and magical paintbrush. The trope-heavy text contains some swipes at bureaucracy, ideologues and belief systems.
The unwieldy plot twists and turns, always creating new questions, but it leaves an uncomfortably large aperture—an unfinished hero’s journey or, more aptly, a literary purgatory. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-55137-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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