Still, the science-fiction theme provides an interesting twist to a heartfelt depiction of a summer of emerging...
After huge craft that might be alien spaceships appear in the skies above remote Allagash, Maine, 11-year-old Roberta investigates.
Working with a backdrop of an actual reported abduction by aliens of four men in 1976, which adds a tantalizing level of reality, in her first children’s book Pelletier explores the possibilities. Allagash, a remote, seemingly uber-safe town, provides the perfect setting for a summer of exploration. Roberta makes tentative peace with her teasing older brother and learns to manage her grief after her beloved grandfather’s death, while her best friend, Marilee, begins to accept her father’s impending marriage—the ultimate confirmation that her divorced parents will never reunite. Amid this emotional turmoil, both girls freely roam the outdoor world, ultimately setting a trap for aliens. Roberta’s first-person narration is believably authentic, and the mysterious spacecraft sightings add a modicum of suspense that weaves enticingly in and out of common coming-of-age themes. When the girls finally experience an actual encounter, it’s something of a letdown; the mystery all dissolves into a not-very-satisfying, rather predictable climax. Altogether more amusing is the fact that everyone in town knows each other very well; Roberta’s entertaining comments on fellow Allagashians will ring true for village residents everywhere.
Still, the science-fiction theme provides an interesting twist to a heartfelt depiction of a summer of emerging self-realization. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8578-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill.
Cryptic clues in a Web comic put a Seattle teenager onto the trail of a deranged kidnapper and his victim.
Three years after the (supposed) drowning of bosom friend Libby, 16-year-old May is shocked to see new stickers and other merch for “Princess X,” an intrepid swordswoman in a puff-sleeved dress and sneakers that she and Libby had privately invented in fifth grade. The princess’s recently posted online adventures tell a scary tale about escaping from a “Needle Man” years after being stolen as a replacement for his own dead daughter. They leave May convinced that Libby is still alive—hiding out from her clever, relentless captor and imbedding veiled messages in the comic that only May would catch. Said hints lead May and Trick, a hacker dude she goes to for help, on a quest through the city’s seedier and underground quarters to encounters with Jackdaw (a gay, goth Robin Hood) and a desperate scheme to steal proof of the Needle Man’s perfidy. Priest cranks the suspense somewhat by casting the kidnapper as both an IT expert and a killer, but because he mostly appears only in the emotionally charged, sparely drawn purple-and-black comics pages that Ciesemier scatters through the tale’s first two-thirds, he remains, at best, a shadowy bogeyman.
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill. (Thriller. 11-14)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-62085-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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