An engaging, eventful, history-based fantasy with realistic protagonists and an enjoyable, twist-filled plot.
In this debut middle-grade novel, young siblings from the 21st century are mysteriously transported to ancient Egypt, where they find friendship and danger as they search for a way home.
John isn’t looking forward to summer vacation on his last day in the fourth grade. His family will be moving from Colorado to Maryland for his dad’s job. Unlike his big sister, Sarah, who is excited about the change, John is sure that he’ll be unhappy and friendless there. During one last mountain hike, the siblings stumble on a strange cave where a hieroglyph of an eye transports them to ancient Egypt. They meet Zachariah, a “brown-skinned boy, barefoot and bare chested, wearing a white kilt-like wrapping,” and find they are able to speak his language. The son of Imhotep, the king’s pyramid architect, Zack, as John and Sarah call him, invites the pair home. (The siblings tell the family they are shipwrecked refugees from a distant land.) Gartner seamlessly mixes history with fantasy in his well-crafted tale, integrating into the plot facts about pyramid engineering, gods and goddesses, housing, and food (the book includes a recipe for an ancient Egyptian dish). With emotional authenticity, Sarah’s ready acceptance of the adventure gives way to empathy for her younger brother’s homesickness and her own fears and doubts. John responds to their experience with disbelief, cautious acceptance, a desire to return to his own time, and analytic fascination—the stars in the Egyptian night sky are so abundant and bright, he reasons, because there’s no pollution. Respect for readers shows, too, in the author’s expressive language: “A lazy cloud” reclines against a lofty mountain pinnacle, “waiting for the sunset show”; Imhotep offers resonant assurance that friendships form with “shared experience and time.” And, after providing vivid encounters with scorpions, a tomb robber, a cobra, and a Nile crocodile, Gartner surprises readers with multiple plot twists having to do with an unsavory time traveler; concerns that the eye transport device could change history; news of a bizarre, anachronistic archaeological find; and a fun little kicker for an epilogue.
An engaging, eventful, history-based fantasy with realistic protagonists and an enjoyable, twist-filled plot.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73415-521-1
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Crescent Vista Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Worthy for inclusion in studies of pioneer days and the westward expansion of the United States.
An illustrated children’s western adventure story brings little-known events of the late 1800s into the present day.
The fifth picture book in a series about a pair of young brothers finds Bryn and Bryce Chance celebrating a birthday with a horseback ride across a rocky western trail, as author Hart (The Chance Brothers Ride to the Rescue, 2007, etc.) imagines a new adventure for her own sons in their home territory of northwestern Oklahoma. As they follow Outlaw Trail, named for notorious real-life horse thief and bank robber Dick Yeager, to its end at the outlaw’s alleged cave hideout, the boys experience the region’s landscape and wildlife. Surprises lurk around every turn as the boys and their horses are startled by a turkey, a coyote and fragile canyon edges. Educational opportunities abound in the geological features of the region, and discussion of isinglass is woven into the story, although Hart omits the risk and amazement of climbing a canyon trail. When the narrow trail crumbles, creating a chasm and separating them from their guide, the surprisingly unperturbed boys calmly continue alone and, narrowly escaping a rockslide in the outlaw’s cave, discover with excitement what Yeager left behind. This tale might be of special interest to readers from the region, who may be interested in seeking out this trail and learning about its historical background. The book’s illustrations are bright but rather one-dimensional and appear to be computer-aided. The Chance Brothers will mostly appeal to beginning readers due to the simplicity of the story, though it suffers from a lack of character development. The basis of the story on actual places and events creates opportunities for further reading and discussion by children and adults.
Worthy for inclusion in studies of pioneer days and the westward expansion of the United States.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-419-68642-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Bunting (I Have an Olive Tree, p. 719, etc.) once again explores larger themes through a quiet family story. Every October, on Lady Liberty’s birthday, Tony and his extended family have a picnic on Liberty Island. The family rendezvous at Battery Park to take the ferry out to the island. Waiting in line, Tony, who thinks the picnic is pretty corny, is approached by a woman, obviously a new immigrant. She gestures her alarm when the ferry departs without her; she is soothed when Tony motions that the ferry will return. Once on the island, Tony’s family has the picnic before toasting the statue and blowing kisses to her. Later, Tony spies the woman he had helped earlier, and the way they look up at the statue, “so still, so respectful, so . . . so peaceful, makes me choke up.” This sense of refuge drifts through Bunting’s text, as fundamental and natural an element of life as are the everyday incidentals she braids into the story and all of which are exquisitely caught by Carpenter’s vivid illustrations. (Picture book. 5-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201656-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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