Readers will be charmed by both the characters and scenery in this moral, upbeat YA fantasy.
Crepeau (Turn Back Time, 2014, etc.) offers a YA fantasy in which a teenage orphan inherits property in Ireland and stumbles into a war that threatens the fae kingdom.
Sixteen-year-old Bridget Kerins lives alone in a shabby apartment in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. She works two jobs, both of her parents have passed away, and her neighbor Mrs. Miller vouches for her as an “aunt” to the authorities. Miraculously, Bridget learns from Ana Gurney, an Irish lawyer, that she’s inherited land near the Irish village of Swinford. Using money she’s saved, Bridget crosses the Atlantic in the hope of starting a new life. The situation changes, however, when Ana is mistaken for Bridget on the road to the property; a foul creature named Dagda, who works for the evil sorceress Morrigan, kidnaps the lawyer, believing her to be the one prophesied to save the fae peoples. Bridget safely rents a car at the airport and makes her way toward Swinford. She meets Aunt Polly, a brownie, and is indoctrinated into the fae world—and the notion that she has special powers, due to faerie and leprechaun ancestry. But even with the help of the handsome Lord Howth, who’s disguised as a Brittany spaniel, can Bridget master her abilities in time to save Ana and the fae? Author Crepeau begins a new YA fantasy series featuring a vibrant cast of mythological characters and a deep appreciation for the majesty of Ireland. The lousiness of Bridget’s Red Hook life is hammered home in lines such as, “she washes the stairs with buckets of bleach water, but nothing removes the odor of urine and stale beer.” (High school for this teenager isn’t even mentioned.) Later, in Ireland and eventually Scotland, the “green hilly pastures that go on for miles” enchant her, as do ruins and ancient castles. When Morrigan’s machinations begin, readers meet creatures such as the strange Anthropophagi (“a headless creature appears, his eyes placed on his shoulders, and his mouth is in the center of his chest. He has no nose”) but also heroic fae royalty, including King Padraig and Queen Geraldine and even a few Arthurian legends. Bridget learns much about herself by the end, including that “Sometimes it is easier...to believe in things outside ourselves, rather than believe in ourselves.”
Pub Date: April 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5188-9830-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Noted social historian/author Meltzer tackles an overwhelming task describing today's broad range of criminal behavior. While many think of crime as violence, really big criminal activity does not occur face-to-face, says Meltzer. Over $174 billion in corporate crime is perpetrated annually—from manufacturers releasing cars with known defects to military officials charging $7,000 for a coffee-maker; from insider Wall Street trading to laundering mob money. Sporting more numbers than in most of his books, Meltzer targets how addiction, greed, learning disabilities, poverty, drugs, and the role of media in the increase of aggression fit together in the patchwork of crime. Objective yet impassioned, Meltzer's survey should make readers "mad" in several senses: hot-and-bothered angry; frenzied with frustration or hoplessness. Though he lists remedies available to ordinary citizens, when corporate executives steal apple juice from babies it's hard not to be distrustful.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-688-08513-X
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
A fresh and intriguing manual of tremendous use for English-language manga fans.
An engrossing guide to manga symbols translated from Japanese.
Kouno, an award-winning Japanese manga artist, offers a detailed look into the world of manpu, the iconography used in manga, which comprise everything from symbols hovering around characters’ heads and bodies to elements in the backgrounds of the panels. In his introduction, Tokyo-based author, reporter, and translator Matt Alt describes the rich history of manpu, from symbols adopted from foreign cartoonists to ones developed by Japanese artists for what was initially a national readership; today manga and anime adaptations have achieved phenomenal global success. Surprisingly, this is the first English-language guide to understanding manpu. The work opens with a table of contents showing each symbol and the pages where it appears. Kouno’s manga panels portray each manpu in context, with explanatory text on the side; many manpu appear on multiple pages, reinforcing readers’ grasp of their meaning. Some will be intuitive to Western readers, but others are deeply embedded in a Japanese cultural context that’s explained in text boxes. An interesting afterword teaches the flow of manga reading, information that will be particularly helpful for beginners. This is a useful book for those who are looking to get into manga but don’t know where to start, but it’s also riveting reading for anyone interested in manpu’s cultural roots.
A fresh and intriguing manual of tremendous use for English-language manga fans. (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781772943085
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Udon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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