Agenda-driven from “howl to snap”—but with action aplenty to go with considerations of complex issues.
The Moonlight Brigade sallies out from Ankle Snap Alley to free the local zoo’s captive creatures.
Prompted by the trapping of his mother and several alley residents to (it turns out) stock a new exhibit titled “The Urban Wild,” raccoon Kit intrepidly leads his motley crew of feral vigilantes on a nighttime rescue mission that, once he smells the miasma of fear and hears the birds’ “songs of sadness,” quickly becomes an effort to open all the cages and pens. But not every creature longs to escape the zoo’s comforts, and the quiet expedition quickly becomes a frantic life-and-death struggle. Though London’s characters do actively debate the conflicting allures of freedom and safety, he portrays the zoo as a nightmarish prison, where the habitats are painted fakes and a peaceable polar bear who elects to stay out of concern for his wild relatives is nonetheless shot at the climax by a panicked person. Ultimately the alley’s “pals of the paw” all escape, though the fates of the riddle-loving baboons, rapping mongooses, and other “animals who’d been trapped and put in a zoo” (as opposed to “zoo animals”) remain unclear. While encouraging readers to understand that “no one want[s] to be labeled by just one part of their life” is a worthy aim, embedding the conversation in the zoo-escape plot is perhaps not the most efficient way to go about it.
Agenda-driven from “howl to snap”—but with action aplenty to go with considerations of complex issues. (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17101-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction...
A traveling salesman tricks an island of innocent, ageless children into selling their most valuable possession for fun and games in this undoubtedly metaphorical tale.
When Gleesome Goodday—looking in the illustrations like an evil clown clad in a Hawaiian shirt—emerges from his rocket ship promising to make everyone’s sweetest dreams come true, Brimir, Hulda and the rest of the children happily exchange percentages of their “youth” for such benefits as the ability to fly and dirt-proof coatings of Teflon. In no time (literally, as Goodday also nails the sun into the sky), the children have abandoned their previously idyllic lives to learn about commerce, ownership, democratic politics and making bombs. It’s all a laugh riot until Brimir and Hulda discover that all the children and animals on the other side of their world are pining away in perpetual darkness and notice that they themselves and all their playmates have gone gray. No worries, though: by abruptly turning Goodday into a fool who is easily tricked into freeing the Sun and emptying his tanks of hoarded Youth, the Icelandic author engineers a facile happy ending.
A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction add bits of savor to an otherwise bland import with a cautionary message that is, at best, vague. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60980-428-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
An airy school story beneath a veneer of fantasy, low both on violence and actual villainy.
Master Dreadthorn's School for Wayward Villains again (Good Curses Evil, 2011) lives up to the "Wayward" as some of its more challenged students keep rescuing captives and saving the day.
Never the brightest of bulbs, headmaster's son Rune Drexler fails to notice a series of broad clues—from leading questions to a glimpse of red undies over bright blue tights—that his new roommate, "Dodge VonDoe," is really a spy from Doctor Do-Good's School for Superior Superheroes. Until, that is, his father and a certain crystal ball disappear and the school is taken over by the genuinely villainous Mistress Morgana. As it turns out, VonDoe (or to use his real name Deven Do-Good) is both working for Morgana and plotting to boot out his own superhero father. Deven is also a thoroughgoing bully on his own turf, which leads to his ultimate downfall. Sanders throws family revelations, secret passages, reconciliations, villain humor ("Ugh, monologues. It was hard to believe Morgana had become such a powerful villainess when she was always blabbing her plans to everyone") and even a horrifying (to some) prophecy about villains becoming heroes into the mix, and dishes out just deserts to all.
An airy school story beneath a veneer of fantasy, low both on violence and actual villainy. (Light fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59990-907-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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