A quick adventure for readers inclined toward flights of fancy.
Stricklen’s YA novel follows two young boys as they adventure into another world.
Blackwater Pond has a bad reputation. Mysterious whisperings taunt its visitors, and the seemingly bottomless center is rumored to lead straight to hell. When Brian, 16, and his younger brother, Tommy, 12, go swimming, the pond seems to swallow Tommy whole. Most assume Tommy drowned, but Brian is convinced he’s alive. Lured by the pond, he wades into its depths and is sucked down into the world beneath the water. There, he encounters two warring factions, the Thorks, who settled the land, and the Trediarians, who maintain control by sacrificing anyone who doesn’t believe in Nimbus, a carnivorous cloud and godlike figure. Brian, realizing that the Trediarians kidnapped Tommy, manages to befriend the Trediarian princess. With her help and that of a quirky Thork named Ebil, they rescue Tommy and set off into the wilds to try to make their way home. Stricklen uses devices from other successful fantasy books, such as falling through a hole into another realm, underground dwellers battling monstrous evil forces, and invented words and creatures. Though not especially original, those devices lend themselves to fanciful storytelling, particularly when describing the surreal surroundings of this distant land. And while the writing isn’t dazzling either, Stricklen skillfully embeds morality lessons and pearls of wisdom throughout the narrative, usually through Ebil’s rants—“So many beliefs and all know they are right. It will never be settled in a fight or display of might”—which parents of young readers will appreciate.
A quick adventure for readers inclined toward flights of fancy.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Beachhead Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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