Humorous adventure tales just don’t get any more wacked…or fun to read than this.
Lots of kids think they live in a zoo; Wahoo Cray actually does.
Wahoo’s dad, Mickey, was the best wild-animal wrangler in south Florida until an iguana, frozen solid in a flash freeze, fell from a tree and conked him on the head. Now, Mickey has migraines and double vision, and the family’s in such dire financial straits that Wahoo’s mother has taken a temporary job teaching Mandarin to American businessmen in China. When offered good money for the use of Mickey’s tame animals, there’s no saying no to the production company of Expedition Survival!, a “reality” show starring Derek Badger (actually a former stepdancer named Lee Bluepenny with a fake Steve Irwin Australian accent). The Crays, however, draw the line at harming any animal; and Derek doesn’t think the scenes are “real” enough. The production company hires Mickey and Wahoo as guides on an Everglades location shoot, which is complicated in true Hiaasen fashion by an abused, runaway girl from Wahoo’s class, a toothy encounter with a jazzed-out snake, a disastrously unsuccessful live-bat brunch…and a vanishing star. Hiaasen’s best for a young audience since Newbery Honor Hoot (2002) features a shy, deep-feeling protagonist who’s also a pragmatist and plenty of nature info and age-appropriate cultural commentary.
Humorous adventure tales just don’t get any more wacked…or fun to read than this. (Fiction. 10-15)Pub Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86842-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Jinks opens her projected trilogy in high style, offering a period melodrama replete with colorful characters, narrow...
Child-eating bogles infest Victorian London, providing work aplenty for “Go-Devil Man” Alfred Bunce and his intrepid young apprentice, Birdie.
Singing morbid verses from popular ballads in her angelic voice to draw the shadowy creatures out of their chimneys, sewers or other lairs so that Alfred can stab them with his special lance, Birdie thinks she has “the best job in the world” despite the risk—she could be snatched and eaten if the timing is even a little off. Alas, the idyll doesn’t survive a double set of complications. First, unctuous would-be warlock Roswell Morton, out to capture one of the monsters for his own evil uses, kidnaps her and plants her in an insane asylum to force Alfred’s cooperation. Second are the unwanted but, as it turns out, saving attentions of Miss Edith Eames, a self-described “folklorist.” Her naïveté about London’s nastier stews conceals both a quick wit and a fixed determination to see Birdie cleaned up and educated in the social graces. The tale is set in a range of locales, most of them noxious and well-stocked with rousingly scary hobgoblins as well as a cast of colorful Londoners with Dickensian names like Sally Pickles and Ned Roach. It dashes along smartly to a suspenseful climactic kerfuffle as it endears its 10-year-old protagonist, whose temper is matched only by her courage in the clutch, to readers.
Jinks opens her projected trilogy in high style, offering a period melodrama replete with colorful characters, narrow squeaks and explosions of ectoplasmic goo. (glossary of slang and monster types) (Historical fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-544-08708-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Rousing adventures on the not-so-mean streets, with heart aplenty.
Two Canadian children take on the Big Apple in this deliciously unlikely, unbridled romp.
Astonished to hear that their father had a drug-dealing brother in New York, newly orphaned Bob and his live-wire little sister, Marie Claire (aka Rat), hitchhike to the city from Winnipeg. For lack of a better plan, they wander Manhattan and the Bronx asking passersby if they know him. This strategy leads to encounters with a host of colorful city types, notably a pair of softhearted con men and a lonely rising rap star, plus plenty of terrific street theater and nights spent sleeping in, alternately, Central Park and a hyperluxurious apartment. And ultimately the children’s search is successful! Their information about Uncle Jerome is even (more or less) accurate, as he turns out to be the CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company. Though many of Hughes’ characters will sink emotional hooks into readers, Rat takes and earns center stage by glibly charming the pants off every adult, showing a winning mix of quick wits and vulnerability, and taking wild flights of imagination—her explanation of the (subtle) differences between a Windigo and a pedophile being a particular highlight. So appealing are they that when one of them suffers a tremendous blow, readers will feel it as intensely as the other characters. The dizzying highs intensify but also ameliorate that devastating low.
Rousing adventures on the not-so-mean streets, with heart aplenty. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62365-020-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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