Delightful verse and surprisingly useful tips make this a winner.
Carson and Bruce McCandless’ (Six Poems and a Song, 2017, etc.) light-verse guide to surviving middle school explains and rates common dangers and provides survival tips.
As everyone knows, going through middle school is a perilous journey that few survive unscathed. Luckily, there’s now an amusing and friendly handbook to guide readers through the worst of it. Some of the dangers described here will be familiar to most kids, such as “Mean Kids” and “Bullies”; others less so, such as “Robots” and “Aliens.” Still others have always lurked but haven’t always been named (“The Patriarchy”; “Body Shamers”). Each short chapter describes a particular danger in amusing but literate light verse; most entries include a danger rating and several tips on survival. For example, the opening piece, “Aliens,” assumes that they must be out there—so why haven’t they shown themselves? But maybe we don’t want them to: “What if, when they go to give us a hug, / They transmit some creepy carnivorous slug?” The danger rating, in this case, is “Speculative, but possibly cataclysmic”; survival tips include avoiding contact and hiding “under the bed—they never look there.” Reassuring! The rhymes and wordplay in the verse sections are witty and inventive, as in “Australia”: “Since ¾ of the fauna you see will assail ya, / and not even the stoutest first-aid will avail ya, / unless you’re decked out in tungsten regalia, / it’s probably best to steer clear of Australia!” (Survival tip: “Try New Zealand.”) The book’s Ogden Nash–like playfulness makes an excellent counterpart to the danger theme, but it provides some solid information, too, among the humor. The “Bullies” survival tips, in particular, are on-point: boys, for example, should avoid the weight room when it’s being used by the football or wrestling teams. And the danger rating for “The Patriarchy” is all too true: “Relentless, though occasionally difficult to detect.” The authors wisely conclude by reminding readers that there’s more to life than fear: “And nobody knows how they’re gonna get through it. / There’s no use in dread. Just get out and do it!”
Delightful verse and surprisingly useful tips make this a winner.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9983351-1-7
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Ninth Planet Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual book for dragon lovers, with plenty of action and a good balance of humor and suspense.
Dragons compete with humans and try to integrate into 21st-century life in Smith’s clever, witty YA debut.
Jason Hewes is an ordinary American kid living on a farmstead in Montana with his dad, an archaeologist at the Montana Archaeological Society. One night after a terrible storm, Jason discovers a dragon in the barn, and his ordinary, if slightly troubled life—his mother and older brother were killed in a car crash, and he’s preyed upon by school bullies—suddenly takes a surreal twist as he tries to understand how this great mythological being suddenly entered his life. The dragon, Petros, can understand human speech, and after Jason’s initial reservations, the boy strikes up a friendship and agrees to help the beast learn more about modern human society, which will hopefully result in peaceful coexistence. More dragons join, along with a group of select teenagers—later known as the Draconauts—and an agreement is made to seek out a mage who can help disguise the creatures so they won’t be so conspicuous in city life. The entry of Norm the mage signals a turning point in the book: An experiment to disguise the creatures goes awry, resulting in dragons only being able to exist in human form and children in dragon form. Once this highly unusual premise is accepted, seeing the human world through dragons’ eyes, and vice versa, becomes quite compelling. It’s hard not to laugh when the rather formal-speaking dragons occupy the teenagers’ bodies; in a particularly funny scene, Petros (transformed into Jason) tries to conduct a children’s party at the local museum. But Norm’s magic has drawn the attention of an age-old enemy and a sinister sect intent on ridding the world of dragons, which puts the children in terrible danger and gives the book an edge to keep the tension rising as the kids try to outwit a menacing foe.
An unusual book for dragon lovers, with plenty of action and a good balance of humor and suspense.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615866246
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Smittyworks Productions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An uneven YA effort, but the appealing characters and mythology may compel readers to continue with the series.
Two teenagers learn that they’re Phoenixes in Hale’s debut YA fantasy novel, the first in a planned series.
Garrett, an Irish teen raised in an orphanage, has little else that’s unusual about him, aside from his extraordinary good looks. But when his beloved aunt passes away, she leaves him a modest fortune and a letter telling him of a journey he must undertake. On that trip to the Himalayas, he learns that the mythological Phoenix is real and that he’s one of only two pure-blood, superpowered Phoenixes left in the world. The other is 17-year-old Lisle, who lives with her wealthy grandfather in British Columbia, and shortly before he dies, he tells Lisle the secret. Garrett and Lisle eventually meet to learn more about their responsibilities as the last of their line, and they soon must defend themselves against those seeking to steal their powers and end the pure-blood Phoenixes for good. As Lisle becomes familiar with her new abilities, including “power of foresight and the power to apprehend,” she becomes torn between Garrett and a “normal” boy from school who loves her. Hale develops the Phoenixes’ mythology and history well, tying it into The Aeneid and well-known Greco-Roman legends, and the teenage leads are charming and likable. However, despite the book’s unique central concept, the plot is very slow moving; the first two-thirds consists of mostly dialogue with relatively little action. Garrett and Lisle are also both surprisingly willing to accept what their elders tell them about the Phoenixes and their roles in the world. The structure, which alternates chapters between Garrett and Lisle, works well at first, but the short chapters start to feel choppy after the characters meet. As the action ramps up near the end, readers may also find that some twists rely on overly convenient plot devices.
An uneven YA effort, but the appealing characters and mythology may compel readers to continue with the series.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0970332332
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Streetcar Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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