In 1890s America, a father-daughter mind-reading act who used their illusionism and acuity to solve crimes committed during Vaudeville tours face a deadly conspiracy in lawless San Francisco.
Imagine a magic show whose first act is charming legerdemain—and whose second act is ghastly mutilation and death. In this wildly uneven YA novel, Wiley, a stage-magic buff and historian, combines elements of real-life illusionists and Harry Houdini contemporaries into a fetching heroine. Adolescent Kyame Piddington and her widowed dad, John, cross an occasionally lawless Victorian-era America as the Impossible Piddingtons, a mind-reading act. They wow crowds with seemingly supernatural feats—actually products of Kyame’s photographic memory (inherited from her tuberculosis-victim mother), Sherlock-Holmesian logical deduction, acute peripheral vision that sees around blindfolds and a secret language of nonverbal cues worked out on the sly with her adoring father. Consequently the Piddingtons not only appear psychic but also sniff out deceit and mischief by bandits, gamblers, second-storey men, bankers and unscrupulous showbiz rivals, not to mention helping police solve crimes as a publicity sidelight to hype the act. After a captivating first half, Wiley has a 2-year narrative “intermission” (taking the opportunity to explain magic trade-secrets in a nonfiction sidebar), then returns in a darker mode. Kyame is now a young woman, still honing her mesmerism and shooting chops while attending art school. John Piddington, retired from touring, works in a Sacramento bank and uncovers a crooked financing/white-slavery/opium dealing scheme that results in a San Francisco tong war and gruesome torture-murder. By the bloody conclusion, Kyame is a girl who seems ready for her dragon tattoo—and two more installments are promised in a proposed Piddingtons trilogy. Wiley deftly renders the period atmosphere, attitudes, action and dialogue, and Kyame could develop a loyal following of readers of all ages and sexes—if only the material’s shifts in tone from PG to R were less schizoid. Still, one looks forward, admittedly with a little trepidation, to whatever Wiley plans to do with the heroine next. A magical concept and a miraculous heroine keep the pages turning in a YA adventure-fiction that feels like two different books fused together at mid-point—the second half far more violent and grim than the first.
Pub Date: July 12, 2010
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 557
Publisher: Barry H. Wiley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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