Formulaic and busy
Two gangs of middle school brainiacs use carbon dating to take down a smuggling ring.
The book begins with a flash-forward: Charlie’s on a cargo ship in Boston Harbor, menaced by a pair of off-the-shelf bad guys, leaping into freezing water to escape. The action cuts back two weeks to when Charlie and his sixth grade Whiz Kids discover a bone on a field trip. They identify it with the help of an excitable white-bearded science professor at Harvard: It’s a woolly mammoth tusk! How did it get to Boston? To find out, they’ll need the help of a new group of budding scientists, led by Janice, a black girl who uses a wheelchair and talks in disability platitudes (“I know I’m different, but we’re all different, right?”). Somehow, every clue in their mystery goes back to “Africa,” though neither specific African countries nor any human residents of the continent are ever referenced. The Whiz Kids are all white except Kentaro, the “little Japanese kid,” and all are male except Crystal; the others are Charlie and two redheaded boys, one gangly and disorganized and the other fat with apparently comical allergies. Their new friends, who attend school in the city—unlike the Whiz Kids, who live in a wealthy suburb—offer racial diversity. What with all these characters, along with (somewhat-accurate, rarely relevant) Boston trivia and science factoids and a mystery involving a wealthy white businessman, there’s no room for character development.
Formulaic and busy . (Adventure. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4100-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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