Rushed pacing and ineffective character development keep the story from living up to its potential.
A young boy gets lost and then kidnapped on a school trip to Jamaica’s Cockpit Country.
High schooler Kemar McBayne is looking forward to the school’s Ecology Club trip, along with his older brother, Oshane, and his younger brother, Tyrik, who’s only 10. His contentious relationship with his little brother causes trouble when an act of mischief on Tyrik’s part almost immediately leads to Kemar’s separation from the group. Unable to make his way back to them, he is later found and befriended by a stranger who turns out to have ulterior motives and holds Kemar hostage in the notoriously difficult-to-navigate Cockpit Country. Kemar decides to try to figure out a way to escape his captor and return to his family. At the same time, Oshane is determined to find his brother despite the others’ support, eventually enlisting the help of one of the region’s Maroon communities in order to track him down. Elm includes interesting, detailed aspects of Jamaican geography and culture that help readers visualize the characters’ experiences. However, this aspect of the novel is not enough to make up for jumpy pacing and storytelling that fails to build suspense or create attachment to the characters or plot. Characters are mostly Black, with some secondary characters mentioned as having pale skin and foreign accents.
Rushed pacing and ineffective character development keep the story from living up to its potential. (Adventure. 8-13)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-976-8267-31-3
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Blouse & Skirt Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
A touching, playful, and satisfying tale of a silver-screen wonder dog.
Before Rin Tin Tin and Lassie there was Strongheart, the first canine movie star, whose real-life career serves as the basis of this fast-paced, dramatic story from Fleming and Rohmann.
In the silent-film era of the 1920s, director Larry Trimble decides his next big movie star will be a dog and in Berlin finds what he is looking for: a thoroughly trained, 3-year-old, male German shepherd with a fierce disposition named Etzel. Renamed Strongheart, Trimble’s find becomes an instant superstar with the release of his first film, The Silent Call, in 1921. Strongheart has an off-screen romance with his leading lady in the appropriately titled The Love Master, resulting in a litter of puppies. The climax of the story is a dramatic courtroom trial in which Strongheart stands accused of attacking and killing 6-year-old Sofie Bedard, but boys from an orphanage produce Sofie in court at the last moment. Strongheart is vindicated when it’s discovered Sofie’s parents orchestrated her disappearance for an extortion scheme. Like a silent movie plot, Fleming’s narrative is full of adventure, romance, and suspense. An author’s note explains the facts behind the story. Rohmann’s expressive illustrations beautifully capture Strongheart’s personality; their integration into the book’s design is striking. Particularly notable are three two-page spreads depicting the dog contemplating and then stealing a doughnut.
A touching, playful, and satisfying tale of a silver-screen wonder dog. (photos, bibliography, notes) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-93410-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Better suited for browsing than reference or research but fairly broad in both scope and humor.
A select dictionary of divine or semidivine warriors, victims, oafs, pranksters, bureaucrats, elementals, and prima donnas.
Being alphabetically ordered from “Amaterasu” to “Zeus,” the 75 entries offer only piecemeal overall pictures of some of the world’s major pantheons. A system of not-very-distinctive icons and culturally stylized borders makes a stab at helping to differentiate one from the next; the table of contents is rearranged at the end to identify major figures by type and tradition, but there is no proper index to names and topics mentioned within the articles. Briggs keeps the tone light by slipping in quips (“If you remember one thing about Loki, remember this: Loki is a jerk”) and poop references. He also acknowledges but tones down the sex, rape, incest, and widespread mayhem that pervade these ancient tales. He enhances his brief retellings of creation and other myths with inset descriptions of major sources for them, and he offers general observations about how gods and entire pantheons evolve or fade over time. Although figures from such living traditions as Shinto, Hinduism, and Indigenous cultures around the world appear, notably missing are any from the Abrahamic traditions, upholding a cosmological double standard. In Briggs’ many neat, simply drawn cartoons, characters’ faces are drawn with little differentiation in physical features, but he’s careful about details of iconography and culture, and he also uses a reasonably broad palette of browns (and, for certain Hindu entities, blues) throughout for skin tones.
Better suited for browsing than reference or research but fairly broad in both scope and humor. (Mythology. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0378-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
