Someone’s out to destroy Mac’s middle school, and Mac must find a way to stop him.
Christian Barrett, called “Mac” after the television secret agent MacGyver, is a problem-solver, operating out of the fourth stall in the East Wing boys’ bathroom in his middle school. For a price, he helps fellow students with their problems: taking care of a bully, forging hall passes, selling test answers, providing completed homework and selling prewritten research papers. And now an eighth-grade girl comes walking into Mac’s “office” and wants Mac to take care of a mean teacher trying to get her expelled. But there’s “something almost predatory” about this girl, like a rattlesnake, and Mac feels “like a small white mouse or whatever it is that rattlesnakes eat.” Her story doesn’t quite add up, and in trying to solve her problem, Mac both uncovers larger evil afoot and finds Vice Principal George breathing down his neck. This second installment does better than its predecessor at building and sustaining intrigue, as Mac and his right-hand man Vince must put a stop to Dr. George’s evil machinations, even if it means putting himself and his business in jeopardy.
Readers will be flushed with excitement to follow Mac’s operations from the fourth stall. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-199630-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER
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Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Two young ghosts with unfinished business in this world join forces.
Eighth grade cyclist Finn McAllister decides to undertake a search for the supposedly crazed driver who forced him off the road and over a cliff to his death, but he spends far more of his time attending his own funeral, hovering near his grieving family and his four besties to overhear conversations, and floating through school—skipping the girls’ restroom because he still has some standards—and positively hammering on the realization that wasting any of life’s opportunities can only lead to regret. He discovers that he can still taste ice cream, smell farts, skip stones in the local lake, and use a TV remote. He can also share thoughts with both the living and with Isabella Rojas, the ghost of a classmate who vanished several months previously but is still hanging around, although she is not sure why. Eventually, in a massively contrived climax that leaves both souls ready to move on, Finn comes up with a scheme to produce proof of Isabella’s death to bring closure to her mother and also absolves his hit-and-run driver of fault (for a reason readers will see coming). In this outing, the usually dynamic duo throws together an aimless ramble around a set of flimsy mysteries that fail to coalesce. Finn reads as White; Isabella is cued as Latinx. Final illustrations not seen.
Likely to sell in spades but a slipshod, slapdash outing from co-authors who usually have higher standards. (Paranormal fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: May 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-50024-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2021
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