Art-loving cave lad Lug again saves his clan (and several others too) from the twin menaces of climate change and bad guys.
As if the arrival of snow and saber-toothed tigers in series opener Dawn of the Ice Age (2014) weren’t upsetting enough, here comes a mountain of ice moving with suspicious speed and precision toward the homes of the Macrauchenia Rider and Boar Rider clans. Riding out atop friendly mammoth Woolly to investigate, Lug and pals find both a glacier riddled with tunnels and Blast, a weirdly white-skinned frozen boy who, when thawed out, offers the glacier as a mobile shelter for the threatened locals. But the sight of exiled thug Bonehead working with Blast hints that all is not as it seems—and indeed, the whole setup turns out to be an ongoing scheme to rob prehistoric communities of their livestock. Can Lug stop Blast and his cronies (and the glacier), free the captive villagers imprisoned at the mountain’s bottom, and maybe even rescue the cub that Blast has kidnapped to keep the resident polar bears in line? Natch! By the end all’s made right, he’s found a new friend in equally artistic Boaga (described as “dark-skinned” with “frizzy black hair and almond-shaped eyes”), and even lost at least some of his pathological fear of animals. Gerardi dresses modern-looking kids in crude furs for the cartoon illustrations.
Stone-cold predictable but with enough silliness to keep sliding along. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5124-0641-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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A shy fourth-grader leads the revolt when censors decimate her North Carolina school’s library.
In a tale that is dominated but not overwhelmed by its agenda, Gratz takes Amy Anne, a young black bibliophile, from the devastating discovery that her beloved From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has been removed from the library at the behest of Mrs. Spencer, a despised classmate’s mom, to a qualified defense of intellectual freedom at a school board meeting: “Nobody has the right to tell you what books you can and can’t read except your parents.” Meanwhile, as more books vanish, Amy Anne sets up a secret lending library of banned titles in her locker—a ploy that eventually gets her briefly suspended by the same unsympathetic principal who fires the school’s doctorate-holding white librarian for defiantly inviting Dav Pilkey in for an author visit. Characters frequently serve as mouthpieces for either side, sometimes deadly serious and other times tongue-in-cheek (“I don’t know about you guys, but ever since I read Wait Till Helen Comes, I’ve been thinking about worshipping Satan”). Indeed, Amy Anne’s narrative is positively laced with real titles that have been banned or challenged and further enticing teasers for them.
Contrived at some points, polemic at others, but a stout defense of the right to read. (discussion guide) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8556-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Starscape/Tom Doherty
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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