A flavorful mille-feuille with equally tasty layers of dark magic, light comedy and salty determination.
Receiving birthday well-wishes is a delight, unless one of those greetings is on creepy green stationery that obligates you to reanimate a supposed-to-be-dead wicked relative.
Demonstrating that Paris isn’t always baguettes and bicycles, Maya’s 13th-birthday happiness is challenged from every angle. Her mother falls ill, her best (and only) friend, Valko, is being sent to Bulgaria, and an off-putting ripple of something peculiar is gradually transforming Paris for the worse. Maya soon realizes that Henri de Fourcroy, the cousin she banished but didn’t exactly kill, is behind the dark wave of strangeness changing the city. With the use of some sinister stationery, Henri binds Maya to helping him rematerialize at the eventual cost of her own life. Thus the struggle to save herself and the world from the growing circle of mischievous magic commences as gargoyles, a madwoman and a purple-eyed shadow stalk her. A twist of the magic makes its transformative effects visible only to Maya and Valko, cementing this as a battle they must strategically fight without adult help. Stone monsters and spells aside, this is at its core a tale of summoning intellect, guts and logic to save the day. This sequel to The Cabinet of Earths (2012) has, like Maya, only become more refined, its vividly sensory third-person narration artful and immediate. And though reading the previous book is helpful, it can substantially stand on its own.
A flavorful mille-feuille with equally tasty layers of dark magic, light comedy and salty determination. (Suspense. 12-15)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210425-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Winning views of a family pulling together, of young people stumbling into adolescence, and of an entertaining if...
Winning a competitive eating contest is David’s only hope of avoiding being grounded for life after he does something stupid with his mother’s credit card.
Already an avid eater and a fan of the “sport,” David Miller, 14, figures that he’s really going to have to up his game after accidently spending $2,000 in an online auction for what is billed as the very hot-dog half that cost pro eater Jooky Garafalo last year’s Nathan’s Famous contest. Fortunately, local pizzeria Pigorino’s is sponsoring a competition at the Iowa State Fair with a $5,000 first prize. Unfortunately, David will have to beat out not only a roster of gifted amateurs to make and win the finals, but also a pair of professionals—notably the renowned but unscrupulous El Gurgitator. As much gourmet as gourmand, David not only vividly chronicles awe-inspiring gustatory feats as he gears up and passes through qualifiers, but describes food with unseemly intensity: “Disks of pepperoni shimmer and glisten on a sea of molten mozzarella.” Even better, though, is the easy, natural way he interacts with Mal, a younger brother whose neurological disability (the term “autistic” is banned from family discourse) transforms but does not conceal a rich internal life. Other subplots, such as a developing relationship between David’s longtime friends Hayden (who is evidently white) and Korean-American Cyn, further enrich a tale in which his own tests and his loving, white family’s determined quest to discover what they dub “Mal’s Rules” both result in thrilling, hard-won triumphs.
Winning views of a family pulling together, of young people stumbling into adolescence, and of an entertaining if controversial pursuit, “reverse-eating events” and all. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9070-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Those preparing to “slay the sucktastic beast known as high school” will particularly appreciate this spirited read.
In the sequel to Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (2017), Aven Green confronts her biggest challenge yet: surviving high school without arms.
Fourteen-year-old Aven has just settled into life at Stagecoach Pass with her adoptive parents when everything changes again. She’s entering high school, which means that 2,300 new kids will stare at her missing arms—and her feet, which do almost everything hands can (except, alas, air quotes). Aven resolves to be “blasé” and field her classmates’ pranks with aplomb, but a humiliating betrayal shakes her self-confidence. Even her friendships feel unsteady. Her friend Connor’s moved away and made a new friend who, like him, has Tourette’s syndrome: a girl. And is Lando, her friend Zion’s popular older brother, being sweet to Aven out of pity—or something more? Bowling keenly depicts the universal awkwardness of adolescence and the particular self-consciousness of navigating a disability. Aven’s “armless-girl problems” realistically grow thornier in this outing, touching on such tough topics as death and aging, but warm, quirky secondary characters lend support. A few preachy epiphanies notwithstanding, Aven’s honest, witty voice shines—whether out-of-reach vending-machine snacks are “taunting” her or she’s nursing heartaches. A subplot exploring Aven’s curiosity about her biological father resolves with a touching twist. Most characters, including Aven, appear white; Zion and Lando are black.
Those preparing to “slay the sucktastic beast known as high school” will particularly appreciate this spirited read. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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