No disguise can mask P.K. Pinkerton’s stout heart and steely resolve in Lawrence’s third (and mighty fine) Wild West...
Twelve-year-old half-Lakota “double-orphan” detective P.K. Pinkerton heads to Carson City in the third of the disarming Western Mysteries series.
The year is 1862, and news of P.K.’s private-eye prowess has spread through the Nevada Territory. A high-class Virginia City courtesan hires the detective to spy on her possibly unfaithful fiance, the very same Poker Face Jace who is P.K.’s beloved mentor. P.K. has what he calls a “Thorn,” difficulty showing or reading emotion; Jace has taught his protégé to read people’s “tells,” and not just around the poker table. As P.K. shadows Jace in Carson City, he thinks “Blind Widow Woman” will be his best disguise ever—until his “sock bosom” migrates north. (P.K.’s true gender is deliberately left iffy until the end.) Carson City is alive with gamblers and guns, drinkers and desperados…even a young Sam Clemens. The silver mines are humming, the railroad’s coming, and the colorful legislature wrangles the law. P.K.—the best kind of hero—navigates it all with unblinking acceptance of the salty characters he meets, straight-shooting honesty and impressive investigative work. The young detective’s dryly hilarious first-person accounts keep the story at a gallop.
No disguise can mask P.K. Pinkerton’s stout heart and steely resolve in Lawrence’s third (and mighty fine) Wild West adventure. (maps) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25635-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Generous portions of yum for fans of mysteries and mille-feuille.
Mix one shy tween, one unwelcome new woman in her single dad’s life, one Victorian hotel, and one TV cook-off prone to mysterious failures. Shake and bake.
Ever since the fifth grade calf’s foot jelly incident, Alice has kept her love for cookery on the down low—but all bets are off after she learns that Hana, her food historian dad’s girlfriend, has signed him up for a weeklong reality cooking competition ominously christened Culinary Combat. Events conspire to keep Alice on the hop too, as the challenge of facing the show’s caustic, terrifying judge while preparing dishes like Victoria sponge cake and charlotte russe on camera—at first as her dad’s sous-chef, then alone after he’s eliminated for alleged misbehavior—is complicated by a string of malfunctioning appliances and other odd kitchen mishaps…not to mention her own tangled feelings about Hana, who introduces her to the intriguing world of Japanese desserts and is actually pretty cool in other ways. Spooning new friends with surprising talents, savvy detective work (it turns out the show does have a saboteur), and mouthwatering foodie talk (if no actual recipes) into this culinary caper, Delaney dishes up a savory tale that tests her young cuisinier—in the face of change as much as in the kitchen—on the way to a flying finish. Alice and her dad present White; Hana has some Japanese ancestry; and there is diversity in the supporting cast.
Generous portions of yum for fans of mysteries and mille-feuille. (Mystery. 10-13)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6927-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Puffin/Penguin Random House Canada
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
A lesser-known aspect of Native American history that promises the excitement of riding the rails yet delivers a handcar...
Twelve-year-old Cal Blackbird trades the freedom of hobo living with his father, a World War I vet, for the regimented world of Challagi Indian Boarding School.
Set in spring and summer of 1932 Depression-era America, Bruchac’s (Abenaki) historical novel sees narrator Cal and his father riding the rails, eking out a meager and honest life as inseparable “knights of the road.” But when Pop reads news about fellow veterans gathering in Washington, D.C., to demand payment of promised bonuses, he decides to “join [his] brother soldiers.” To keep Cal safe while away, Pop tells him about their Creek heritage and enrolls him at Challagi. Even though he’s only “half Creek” and has been raised white, Cal easily makes friends there with a gang of Creek boys and learns more about his language and culture in the process. Though the book is largely educational, Creek readers may notice the language discrepancy when their word for “African-American” is twice used to label a light-skinned Creek boy. Additionally, Cal’s articulation of whiteness sounds more like a 21st-century adult’s then a Depression-era boy’s. More broadly, readers accustomed to encountering characters who struggle along their journeys may find many of the story’s conflicts resolved without significant tension and absent the resonant moments that the subject matter rightly deserves.
A lesser-known aspect of Native American history that promises the excitement of riding the rails yet delivers a handcar version of the boarding school experience. (list of characters, afterword) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2886-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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