A supernatural mystery that should please tween fans of Coraline (2002) and The Last Apprentice (2005, etc.). Jim’s father has just taken a job as Head Gardener of Minerva Hall, a crumbling English manor. Jim is forbidden to roam the grounds but is compelled to root around by spectral voices that continually whisper to him, “Find the Seventh!” Through ghostly visitations and local-history pamphlets, Jim determines that a Minerva ancestor disturbed an ancient pagan site, resulting in the untimely demise of one Minerva child in each generation on the longest day of the year. Now those ghost children are asking for his help. As the summer solstice looms, can he protect the autistic son of the current Lord Minerva—the seventh possible victim of the curse? Though many of Jim’s discoveries are awfully convenient, horror fans will be too be busy piecing together the fragments of the pagan prophecy to notice or care. Younger readers may be disturbed by the all-too-real details of the children’s deaths, but all in all, this is a fairly age-appropriate scary read just in time for Halloween. (Horror. 11-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-072822-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
Martin comes home from school one day only to fall captive to a man he’s never seen before. After being forced to write a ransom note for his mother, he is bound, carried off to a houseboat moored on a nearby canal, and locked in. When Martin questions his captor, he is told that Martin’s father has won the lottery and the kidnapper, called “The Man,” wants a share. In horror, Martin recognizes The Man’s accomplice—and girlfriend—in the plot. It’s Martin’s own mother, in the first of several plot twists that range from silly to sublime. Martin’s father claims there is no money, and The Man plans further threats; in the meantime, Martin squirms out a window on the boat and gets to shore, only to bump into the kidnapper’s daughter, Hannah. Hannah, for reasons known only to the author, leads Martin through a long chase that eventually takes them back to the boat, which explodes, ending the game. Readers who have suspended all disbelief will still be surprised that all ends well, as the members of both families forgive everyone else and get on with their lives. That a boy’s own mother is behind his kidnapping is the high concept that keeps this farfetched plot afloat. Teenagers who doubt their value in their own families will find the satire rejuvenating, while the preposterous plot twists and special effects seem ideal for the silver screen. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: April 15, 1998
ISBN: 0-8234-1363-2
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Resembling a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges movie in plot and tone, this fabulistic story from Ferris has an unconventional style and offbeat sense of humor that will delight readers or exhaust them, depending on their tolerance for screwball comedies. Wealthy Horatio Alger Huntington-Ackerman’s two money-hungry brothers poison his birthday cake, with the intention of wiping out his entire family so they can inherit the riches. Instead, Horatio, wife Mousey, the butler Bentley’s wife, Flossie, and a pet chicken end up in comas. Horatio’s son Sandy and Bentley set out to nail the evil duo, and to revive their loved ones; the plot thickens when Sandy meets Sunny, a chatty nurse and love-interest, and they interact with his neighbors—the “inmates” of Walnut Manor, a home for the “distressed.” A financial subplot and a muddle of characters, defined by their eccentricities, clog the pacing of this throwback, but when the various subplots converge and the happy endings commence, the wrap-up is resounding. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201590-6
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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