In the tenth of the Baseball Card Adventures, young Joe “Stosh” Stoshack goes back in time to warn star player and renowned humanitarian Roberto Clemente not to board the plane full of relief supplies that crashed, killing him, in 1972. Throwing in a little something for his audience’s grandparents, the author has Stosh overshoot the mark to land in 1969—at Woodstock, just in time to hear Jimi Hendrix play the “Star Spangled Banner” and then to catch a ride with hippies in a VW bus to a game in Cincinnati where he gets an inspirational pep talk from the hero himself after witnessing some of the man’s amazing on-field feats. Hardly does Stosh get a chance to absorb what he’s learned about baseball and about caring for others than his own great-grandson arrives to carry him forward in time to 2080, where humanity hangs on the verge of extinction thanks to global warming. A less veteran author might struggle to pack all of this in, but Gutman delivers just the right blend of action and information before closing with both a table of Clemente’s career stats and a list of eco-activist websites. (Baseball fantasy. 10-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-123484-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A truly #BlackGirlMagic, cloudy-day, curl-up kind of book.
Maya knows her father’s stories aren’t real—are they?
Maya, a comic-book–loving, anemic 12-year-old Black girl, is suffering through situational math when she experiences a sudden, time-stopped moment when “the color bled from the world like someone was sucking it away through a straw.” That is not the only strange incident: Maya has an all-too-real dream of a man with skin “the color of the moon” and “pale violet eyes” who has the same color-sucking ability; her structural engineer papa literally disappears in front of her; and when she and her friends Frankie and Eli find themselves fighting shape-shifting darkbringers, Frankie discovers her own light-shooting skills. What Maya, Frankie, Eli, and readers find out from Maya’s mother is that Papa’s real identity is Elegguá, the most powerful of the West African orishas, guardian of the veil between this world and those of the darkbringers and other forces. Not only that, but Frankie’s newly found gift came from her late mother, who is also an orisha, and Eli is part orisha, too. The astonishing series of subsequent revelations leaves readers agog, eager to know how Maya and her pals will use their powers to heal the veil and save their mostly Black and brown neighborhood. In her author’s note, Barron describes how this book has risen from her explorations of the traditions of her West African ancestors.
A truly #BlackGirlMagic, cloudy-day, curl-up kind of book. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-328-63518-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation.
The fourth wall suffers major breaches as young characters from a popular fantasy series and the "real real world" join forces to battle threats in both.
Born of a real mother and a fictional dad, Bethany has been searching for her father ever since he disappeared into a book on her fourth birthday. When classmate Owen sees her materializing out of a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she unwillingly acquires a gobsmacked ally who persuades her to pick up a finding spell from the cliffhanger scene at the end of Volume 6 in his adored Kiel Gnomenfoot series. Owen tags along to do the unthinkable: change the plot by saving the Dumbledore-ish Magister from death at the hands of mad scientist and archvillain Dr. Verity. Crises snowball as Owen finds himself caught in a climactic battle between Magic and Science in the yet-to-be-published seventh volume. Meanwhile, Bethany is left on this side of the printed page to somehow prevent the Magister, enraged by the revelation that he's fictional, from freeing all made-up people and creatures and exiling their creators into a storybook to see how they like having no free will. Riley concocts a tasty mix of familiar tropes and truly inventive twists for his Gnomenfoot scenario plus a set of broadly rendered scene stealers for a supporting cast. For a plot, he dishes up a nonstop barrage of situational pickles for his increasingly desperate protagonists.
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0919-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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