A gripping, thought-provoking adventure to read and discuss.
Lost in the woods beyond their English village, three schoolmates spend a terrifying night during which the boundaries of time dissolve.
Eleven-year-old Charlie and her friend Dizzy set off for an afternoon, searching for “Old Crony,” who left the secret messages Dizzy found in the woods—or so their classmate Johnny Baines has claimed. Instead, frightened by Johnny’s masquerade as a bloodied monster, they run blindly into the trees. Shortly, all three are lost in what is suddenly a trackless, endless forest amid a fearsome storm. Using science theories about time, a quotation from T.S. Eliot, secret messages, and elements of quest-patterned fantasy, Edge creates a historical thriller set in 1933 in a realistically detailed natural setting. The author of The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day (2019) and other time-bending titles populates this tale with a tomboy (11-year-old Charlie loathes her real name, Charlotte), nature-loving Dizzy, and mean boy Johnny Baines, “the toughest kid in school.” Dizzy has light brown skin and a “lolloping walk” thanks to an early bout with polio; the other two are likely white. Charlie’s first-person present-tense narrative is suspenseful, ending with welcome relief. “We can change the world,” Charlie says, as they emerge the next morning. A final chapter summarizes their later lives: how they were, indeed, changed by the events of that night and their contributions in World War II.
A gripping, thought-provoking adventure to read and discuss. (Historical thriller. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17308-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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