Nothing spices up a boring road trip like moments of extreme terror.
Twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald squeak through numerous murder attempts at roadside attractions across the Midwest and on eastward.
After berating readers who skipped the opener, Mission Unstoppable (2011), Gutman picks up his unconventional cross-country travelogue where he left off. He takes the RV holding his 13-year-old brainiacs and their oblivious parents from the National Mustard Museum in Spring Green, Wisc., to the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. Along the way, he pauses to suspend the sibs in French-fry cages over boiling oil outside the first McDonald’s, imprison them in glass vats of soft-serve ice cream at Ohio’s spectacular Cedar Point Amusement Park, lock them inside Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum (with a Megadeth track cranked up to mind-blowing level) and subject them to other perils. What’s up? It seems aptly named bad guy Archie Clone and other assassins are out to kill, or perhaps test, them before they can join a secret organization of child geniuses and collect a huge reward. Tucking in small photos, instructions for following the route on Google Maps, facts about attractions large and small and mysterious ciphered messages, the author brings his confused but resourceful youngsters to an explosive climax and a shocking revelation that guarantees further adventures on the road back to the left coast.
Nothing spices up a boring road trip like moments of extreme terror. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-182767-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sensitive, suspenseful mystery that deftly navigates the uncertainty of mental illness.
"I was so far from normal, it wasn't even funny—except, of course, when it was," remarks Footer Davis, establishing the tone for an investigation into missing kids and parental mental illness.
For Footer, normality includes her mother going off her medication and pulverizing snakes with an elephant gun, leading to hospitalization for her bipolar disorder. Coinciding with her mother's latest episode is the case of two children who disappeared in a fire after a murder, which Footer and her friends are determined to solve, their record of the investigation playing out via interviews and banter in their notebooks. The notebook entries provide levity, light romance and strong touches of character development in an increasingly tense plot. Suddenly, Footer is seeing a girl in flames and hearing her mother's voice. What if Footer is inheriting her mother's illness? Worse, what if her mother was involved in the murder? When everything seems like a symptom on the Internet, the line between "normal" and "crazy" blurs, and Vaught traces it with realistic care. As Footer tries to make sense of her mother's disjointed conversations, the line touches her mother, too—readers will be moved and reassured to discover that even in her illness, her mother is still a mother, watching out for Footer in her own ways.
A sensitive, suspenseful mystery that deftly navigates the uncertainty of mental illness. (Mystery. 10-12)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2276-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A yummy debut, though readers with sensitive stomachs would be well-advised to check them at the door.
Two sinister spinsters spirit a seemingly ordinary fifth-grader away one day to a moldering former asylum, informing her that she's become an orphan and they are her great-aunts. Yeah, right.
"Now sit up straight and eat your Lumps." Locked into her room at night by "Aunts" Primrose and Prudence and fed only Mystery Lumps, Anastasia nearly succumbs to misery at first. But like her capable literary heroine, detective/veterinarian/artist Francie Dewdrop, she's made of sterner stuff—and is soon turning up startling clues, terrifying discoveries and, in the asylum's darker reaches, other young captives with decidedly peculiar abilities. Along with drawing most of her characters from Roald Dahl's casting company and concocting an eerie setting positively made for Unfortunate Events, Grant threads her narrative with direct addresses to Readers and delicious turns of phrase: "A pink-patterned carpet runner spooled down the steps like a monstrous spotty tongue." Not to mention multiple atmosphere-lightening references to Anastasia's "tragic flatulence" and the odd wade into the nearby bog to gather leeches for, ugh, nonmedicinal purposes. Anastasia herself displays a few quirks, such as a sudden appetite for moths. Despite revelations following a rescue by a pair of shape-changing allies, the author leaves at least one sequel's worth of unexplained puzzles. Portillo's frequent vignettes add a properly cobwebby Gothic look.
A yummy debut, though readers with sensitive stomachs would be well-advised to check them at the door. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37007-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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