Starring a Canadian teenager whose entire family on one side has for centuries been killed by lightning and a small, pink companion pig who is the brains of the pair for all that she can only oink, this boarding-school tale labors at times but achieves a certain amount of offbeat appeal. Still angry at his mother for being fatally struck too soon, Newton checks into the Jerry Potts Academy of Higher Learning and Survival, determined to score top marks while eluding the bolt that has his name on it. Tackling a curriculum that mixes conventional studies with instruction in disaster and wilderness survival, he succeeds, at least in part—with help from Joséphine, a self-possessed piglet acquired in the course of creating a mystery-meat truffle quiche (recipe included) for a class assignment. Understandably tense given his circumstances, but also temperamental and given to treating would-be friends badly, Newton isn’t particularly likable, but readers will at least sympathize with him—and Jerry Potts makes an entertaining riff on the likes of Hogwarts, Lemony Snicket’s Prufrock Prep or the Axis Academy in Catherine Jinks’s Evil Genius (2007). (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-74700-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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