An Ottawa teenager nabs a polluter and sees a hostile teacher served justly embarrassing desserts in this offbeat farce. Suspended from school for swearing at a contemptuous new teacher, John ``Spud'' Sweetgrass still has his job, selling ``chips'' from a curbside wagon. Smelling an all-too-familiar odor- -rancid cooking oil—at a polluted beach, Spud suspiciously follows Dumper Stubbs, a slovenly delivery man who services local restaurants and chip-wagons, and witnesses him emptying oil into a storm drain. Spud blows the whistle—and loses his job. Doyle's present-tense, slapdash delivery and heavily caricatured adult characters make for a comic-book story, contrived but nonstop; from the high hilarity of a volleyball game played without net or ball, to the exciting climax, in which a vengeful Stubbs rams Spud's wagon, readers will keep turning the pages. By the end, Spud's fortunes have turned as golden as the fries he serves; his boozy and withdrawn mother turns over a new leaf, he's ``unfired,'' back in school, a local hero with a new girlfriend, and the local newspaper runs a photo of his teacher and a bevy of strippers. Replete with laughs, tears, and twists, plus a young hero to admire and a cardboard villain to hate, this will slide down effortlessly, like all proper snacks. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-88899-164-9
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride.
Disaster overtakes a group of sixth graders on a leadership-building white-water rafting trip.
Deep in the Montana wilderness, a dam breaks, and the resultant rush sweeps away both counselors, the rafts, and nearly all the supplies, leaving five disparate preteens stranded in the wilderness far from where they were expected to be. Narrator Daniel is a mild White kid who’s resourceful and good at keeping the peace but given to worrying over his mentally ill father. Deke, also White, is a determined bully, unwilling to work with and relentlessly taunting the others, especially Mia, a Latina, who is a natural leader with a plan. Tony, another White boy, is something of a friendly follower and, unfortunately, attaches himself to Deke while Imani, a reserved African American girl, initially keeps her distance. After the disaster, Deke steals the backpack with the remaining food and runs off with Tony, and the other three resolve to do whatever it takes to get it back, eventually having to confront the dangerous bully. The characters come from a variety of backgrounds but are fairly broadly drawn; still, their breathlessly perilous situation keeps the tale moving briskly forward, with one threatening situation after another believably confronting them. As he did with Wildfire (2019), Newbery Honoree Philbrick has crafted another action tale for young readers that’s impossible to put down.
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64727-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
A tasty appetizer, with every sign of further courses to come.
With gleeful panache, Springer introduces an innocent but capable young sleuth—the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, no less—and takes her from wild English countryside to the soupy filth of Victorian London.
Having led a free-spirited but cloistered life on the ancestral country estate, 14-year-old Enola Holmes is thrown for a loop by her mother’s sudden disappearance—not to mention the subsequent arrival of her long-absent big brothers, both of whom turn out to be overbearing and dismissive of women. Rather than meekly knuckle under, though, Enola makes careful preparation (she thinks) and slips off to track her wayward parent down. On the way, she falls into the furor surrounding an apparent kidnapping (see title)—and then, barely does she arrive in the big city before some authentically scary ruffians snatch her, too. Naïve but a quick study, and more resourceful than even her renowned siblings, Enola resolutely surmounts each challenge that comes her way. By the end, she has rescued the spoiled young aristocrat, eluded her brothers, gotten a lead on her mother thanks to a series of cleverly coded messages and even set herself up as a “Perditorian”—a finder of lost things and people. A tasty appetizer, with every sign of further courses to come. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24304-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Sleuth/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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