An inspiring, filled-to-the-brim adventure; a great example of superpowers done right.
A group of middle school kids learns to use their superpowers in Huerta’s debut novel.
Dr. Lucas McKenna, alongside his partner Dr. Benjamin Price, used to run a genetics lab in Portland, Maine. Together, they worked on the Gray Matter Project, which focused on helping people use more than 10 percent of their brains. Price died in a mysterious plane crash, and McKenna came under suspicion of sabotage, losing his lab funding and career. Ten years later, he’s teaching middle school science in the all-American town of Tempe Ville, Maine. He’s been lucky enough to know and instruct a group of remarkable children gifted with superpowers: Annie (invisibility), GG (super strength), Sophie (healing) and Tommy (telepathy). When a new student named Peter survives a bizarre accident, McKenna realizes he too must have powers. Peter, in fact, can move things with his mind—he only needs practice. While quick to befriend his fellow carriers of what McKenna calls the “alpha gene,” Peter also never backs down from bullies, often causing more harm than good. McKenna decides to shape these supertalented kids into a team that can work together before the shadowy group that’s been stalking him closes in. Huerta, in a fast-paced story laced with sweetness and smarts, reveals the hidden lives of blossoming superheroes. Middle school shenanigans—like shopping at a forbidden candy store or hunting a local ghost—complement scenes in which Peter masters his power. The author frequently offers his heroes, and his young audience, solid real-world advice, like when McKenna tells Peter to “practice his ability and stretch the brain muscle every day.” His female characters, sadly, feel underused. Annie, though featured in an early flashback as the miraculously disappearing baby, slides into the background as Peter’s love interest. Sophie, an introvert, only pops up when someone needs healing. That said, this coming-of-age story is clever enough to delight anyone who picks it up. Occasional grammatical glitches, like the use of “worst” when “worse” is meant, can’t change that.
An inspiring, filled-to-the-brim adventure; a great example of superpowers done right.Pub Date: June 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989501408
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Angel M. Huerta
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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