Heart-rending and genuine, this magical coming-of-age story is not to be missed.
The queen is dying, a strange menace lures townspeople to places unknown, and Princess Jeniah’s only hope for saving her monarchy lies in the one place prophesied to bring about its destruction.
In Emberfell, where perpetual happiness reigns, Jeniah and Aon, a commoner, feel like outsiders because they alone seem to know sorrow and fear. Bound together by the grief of parental loss, the two protagonists vow to uncover the secret behind Aon’s mother’s strange disappearance and how it relates to the foreshadowed downfall of the monarchy’s seemingly blissful 1,000-year rule. The mysterious Dreadwillow Carse, the only place in the kingdom plagued by sadness, appears to hold the answers to both. In his latest fantasy novel, Farrey (The Grimjinx Rebellion, 2015, etc.) weaves a captivating and suspenseful tale of the power of female friendship and the pain of growing up. His masterful crafting of Jeniah’s character pierces the pampered-princess stereotype, gifting readers with an intricate portrayal of a frightened yet tenacious dark-skinned girl for whom impending responsibility for an entire kingdom hardly feels like a fairy tale. True leadership, like responsible adulthood, means living with the pressure to do what is right tinged with the constant fear of failure. As they uncover the horrifying secrets of the Carse, Jeniah and Aon learn that a life well-lived includes sorrow as well as joy.
Heart-rending and genuine, this magical coming-of-age story is not to be missed. (Fantasy 10-14)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61620-505-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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