A thought-provoking speculation about the nature of reality.
Maisie Day’s life stops on her 10th birthday—or perhaps it begins.
Combining theoretical astrophysics and sibling dynamics, Edge (The Jamie Drake Equation, 2018, etc.) weaves another science-based tale. Maisie is “academically gifted,” curious about how the universe works, tutored at home after a bad school experience, and doing university-level studies in math and physics online. Her resentful 15-year-old sister, Lily, follows a more usual path, facing high school exams and peer pressures. Chapter by chapter, Maisie’s first-person, present-tense narration alternates between versions of her 10th birthday: the morning before a fatal accident and the disorienting experience of waking up in a virtual reality that begins with the same day. The disorientation is echoed in the reader’s experience as the ending of each chapter seems to lead into the beginning of the one that follows—but in a different existence. In the story, the experience of passing through a black hole is likened to the gradual destruction of a computer game from the inside, with time and space stretching; passing through the singularity at the black hole’s heart allows entrance into a different reality. An author’s note will help readers think about the science concepts introduced. These white-presenting girls are not particularly convincing characters, and the description of public education is uninformed, but the fact that the science-obsessed protagonist is female is positive.
A thought-provoking speculation about the nature of reality. (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-64640-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A film is already in development, and if it lives up to this marvel-laden debut, it’ll be well worth seeing.
Mibs can’t wait for her 13th birthday, when her special gift, or “savvy,” will awaken.
Everyone in her family—except beloved Papa, who married in—has one, from Grandpa Bomba’s ability to move mountains (literally) to Great Aunt Jules’s time-traveling sneezes. What will hers be? Not what she wants, it turns out, but definitely what she needs when the news that a highway accident has sent her father to the ICU impels her to head for the hospital aboard a Bible salesman’s old bus. Sending her young cast on a zigzag odyssey through the “Kansaska-Nebransas” heartland, Law displays both a fertile imagination (Mibs’s savvy is telepathy, but it comes with a truly oddball caveat) and a dab hand for likable, colorful characters. There are no serious villains here, only challenges to be met, friendships to be made and some growing up to do on the road to a two-hanky climax.
A film is already in development, and if it lives up to this marvel-laden debut, it’ll be well worth seeing. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3306-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial/Walden Media
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character.
A precocious seventh-grader tries to turn over a new leaf and end her term as the class clown.
It’s New Jersey, 1990, and Jacky Hart is the middle child in a family with six other girls. Attention is hard to come by, but Jacky has earned her fair share by being the endlessly funny member of her large, white family. Unfortunately, Jacky’s teachers do not appreciate this goofball attitude. Jacky joins the school play to channel her talents creatively and discovers a passion for performing, but not all is well. Jacky's mother is overseas as a citizen soldier in the run-up to the first Gulf War, and her lifeguard father is spending way too much time with an attractive female fellow lifeguard. A lot of other things happen too, but this is typical for Patterson. His novels are made or broken not by their plots but by their lead characters, and Jacky is the best yet. Fun, smart, emotionally engaging, Jacky is a character that young readers will love spending time with. Sure, the novel could lose about 100 pages and still tell the same story, but Jacky and her sisters are so endearing readers won't feel the effects of the chubby second and third acts until long after finishing the book, and few will really care. Pop-culture references from the ’90s and the 2010s (for comparison) abound.
A typical Patterson plot significantly elevated by its title character. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26249-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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