A mind-bender-cum-novel, set against the bleak landscapes of schoolyard bullying. Theo is tormented by a vicious boy, Jeffrey, and wants revenge. He doesn't just want to kill him or set him up, he wants to wreck himdestroy his mind and soul. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, Theo has a talent for creating devices, a talent that goes beyond genius, beyond artistry: It approaches the metaphysical. When he enlists new kid Michael as his ally, Michael is at once intrigued and terrified. Theo's new device, a wrecker, turns out to be more than either of them had imagined. Skinner's You Must Kiss a Whale (1992), was, like this one, weird. His characters and situations are once again, bizarrely familiar, and his style is unique and compellingly odd. Michael is realistically drawn. He is introspective, struggling with self- doubt, a nice kid; Theo, on the other hand, stepped out of a Dali painting. Michael is mesmerized, wants to know and understand Theo better, yet never does. The descriptions of Theo's method of working and of the machines themselves, are strange and haunting; the outcome immensely satisfying and will linger in the mind. Skinner stretches the boundaries of children's fiction with an unforgettable story. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-79771-9
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Decades after the events of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009), teenager Gabry lives in relative safety. Despite the Barrier keeping the ravaging zombies out of town, Gabry is a terrified homebody who wants only to stay sheltered with her mother, the refugee heroine of Forest. Her nervousness is justified; when Gabry is peer-pressured into sneaking past the Barrier for a night of adolescent rebellion, several of her friends are zombified. (One wonders, if teens sneaking out for a snog is so dangerous to society, how there any humans left at all.) The ensuing chaos sends Gabry into the wilderness where, encumbered by revelations about love and family, she encounters zombie-worshiping cultists, the dangerous remnants of the army and her own past. Whatever comes between Gabry and her mother, there’s one thing they definitely have in common: Like her mother, Gabry experiences an angst-ridden, gloomy love triangle while fleeing from zombie hordes in the forest’s depths. Fast-paced despite the mawkish romance, it will be gobbled up by fans of the first volume like brains. (Horror. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 9, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-385-73684-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Karr (The Cave, 1994, etc.) chooses the silent film studios during WW I as a backdrop for twin adolescent film stars Fitzhugh and Nelly Dalton's discovery of a ring of German sympathizers. Although their father's suspicious death in the explosion of a munitions dump has forced the twins and their mother to move out of Manhattan, things are looking up for the scrappy family. Fitzhugh and Nelly will star in a new film serial, In the Kaiser's Clutch, written and sold to the studio by their mother. The twins eventually uncover their leading man as the brains behind a secret German bomb factory. By juxtaposing plot summaries of each serial installment at the opening of every chapter and then describing all the hard work that goes into the segments, Karr accurately recreates the early film industry, and those who can give themselves up wholeheartedly to some of the campier aspects of this will have a ball. The plot is stuffed with cornball jokes, wooden dialogue, and clichÇd happy family scenes; the German characters are reduced to thick-accented, shifty-eyed, bravado-spouting villains, and the novel ultimately becomes as jingoistic as the fictional serial at its core. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-33638-5
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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