A Yule slog.
Santa’s looking for a successor…time for a Christmas contest of epic proportions.
Ollie and his best friend, Celia, are 11-year-old elves (if they were humans, he’d be white and she’d be black) who work in Games & Puzzles when the current Santa Claus—Matt Claus—announces a contest for persons under 16 to vie to become the next Santa. Ollie and Celia join a motley crew of Clauses, humans, and elves as contestants in a monthlong competition. The first contest—sneaking past giant, fire-breathing robot toddlers to deliver wish letters to the proper departments—winnows down the field. Can the best friends hold on to their Christmas cheer and prevail through 10 more wacky Christmas contests? Huett’s debut is an idea with potential buried under an avalanche of unnecessary scenes and stock characters in Christmas costumes. The contestants routinely break the rules of the competition, and the contests themselves at time run counter to the stated goal of finding the best next Santa (as in one that features random elimination). Ramp, an obviously elderly Claus relative, masquerades as a teenager to enter, and his attempts at kidspeak, never particularly funny, grow tiresome. Ollie’s wide-eyed excitement and sweetness are cloying out of the gate, and his naiveté stretches credulity.
A Yule slog. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05214-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Another strong and enjoyable entry that further expands the earlier worldbuilding.
Barclay and his friends head into the Desert for their next adventure.
Barclay, Viola, and Tadg saved the Sea (and the world) in the last installment of Foody’s series, but stakes are still high. The villain of The Weeping Tide (2022), Audrian Keyes, was never captured and could still be out there. Not to mention that the trio must take an intimidating set of courses called the Symposium before they can become actual Lore Keepers—those who wield Lore magic and tame the world’s creatures as companions. So the three friends and Runa Rasgar, their mentor, travel to the University of Al Faradh to embark on the next step in their magical education. During the Symposium, the students also participate in the Tourney, an unofficial annual prank competition that pits the different apprentice tracks against each other. Now 13, Barclay must juggle peer expectations, academic pressure, and physical danger as unnatural sandstorms threaten the Desert’s capital city of Menneset. Readers who’ve been along for the journey can expect to enjoy the same level of solid storytelling and racial diversity as before. An especially sweet element here is the depiction of Viola’s harmonious blended family, as readers meet her parents, stepfather, and half sister.
Another strong and enjoyable entry that further expands the earlier worldbuilding. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-66591-075-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
This suspenseful, undersea dystopia should keep middle schoolers hooked.
Several centuries after global warming has devastated the planet, a tyrannical government has taken control of the West Coast of America.
In a small seaside community in what was Southern California, Nere lives with her scientist mother and a pod of trained dolphins. Unbeknownst to Nere, her parents have genetically engineered her and several other children to breathe under water so they can live free there someday. When the government announces its intention to move the entire community inland, Nere’s mother finishes the alterations on the children and sends them away into the sea, where they will try to join Nere’s father’s colony for these new “Neptune children.” Nere and her friends, along with their friendly dolphins, must make their way there under the sea while fighting sharks and avoiding capture by government forces. They communicate telepathically, and Nere is even able to talk with the dolphins. Together with other Neptune children from Southern California, they head north, hiding and fighting all the way. Holyoke keeps her prose well-pitched to her audience, providing enough violence and even death to create suspense but muting it appropriately. She creates an interesting and diverse set of characters, including the dolphins. The science-fiction elements are nothing new, but they are built on good information about oceanography.
This suspenseful, undersea dystopia should keep middle schoolers hooked. (Science fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5756-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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