BEATRICE BEECHAM'S FEARSOME FEAST

Name: BEATRICE BEECHAM'S FEARSOME FEAST
Author: Dave Jeffery
ISBN: 978-1-84728-293-4

by Dave Jeffery ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 19, 2007

Entertaining–but unnecessarily puzzling–this may appeal to fans who like their mysteries unsullied by elements of fantasy....

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This fun, if slightly incoherent, British girl-detective escapade offers eccentric characters, snooping, danger and cookery for the middle-school crowd.

Young Beatrice lives for cooking, holding imaginary conversations with her favorite famous chef when she’s trying to solve a problem. Uprooted to a tiny seaside village when her father loses his job, her family moves in with her colorful, elderly â€œAunt” Maud, a nicely drawn character who adds some zip to the narrative–as does a quirky librarian. When Beatrice drops a centuries-old cookbook given to her by Maud, she discovers within it obscure poems that she thinks are clues to an old mystery. Teaming up with three local kids, Beatrice sets off to hunt for evidence. Clues lead them to the powerful family that owns the town, and into contention with some standard-issue bullies. Beatrice then enters the â€œFearsome Feast,” a contest to produce a truly inedible dish, and she gains access to the manor house with a hilarious, gag-inducing creation. Maud joins her, and the two end up in a cliffhanger battle against conventional baddies. Alas, frequent typos and grammatical errors clutter the otherwise nice narrative flow.

Entertaining–but unnecessarily puzzling–this may appeal to fans who like their mysteries unsullied by elements of fantasy. (Fiction. 10-12)

Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-84728-293-4

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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GOING SOLO

by Roald Dahl illustrated by Quentin Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1986

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A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986

ISBN: 0142413836

Page Count: 209

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
QUENTIN BLAKE'S FANTASTIC JOURNEYS
by Quentin Blake ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
<i>MONA LISA</i> AND THE OTHERS
by Alice Harman ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
ROALD DAHL SHAPES
developed by Roald Dahl ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

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MONSTER

by Walter Dean Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1999

The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...

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In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.

Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.

The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)