When 16-year-old Marco Polo’s father vanishes, Marco and his friends set off on a rescue mission that takes them from the everyday world to the magical “wild and untamed” Unknown Lands beyond the Insurmountable Mountains. Standard fantasyland fare mixes uncomfortably with reality, with normal everyday Venetians traveling through a Mongol Empire rewritten as a demon-infested land of myth. Along with his barely characterized companions, Marco travels to the court of Kublai Khan to save his father. This quest fantasy draws from the real Polo’s story for set dressing: A Mongol princess becomes a disguised martial artist; the Persian khan Arghun becomes an evil mage with mouths on his hands. The many terrible perils of traveling to the East (none particularly perilous) don’t add much tension to this low-key adventure. Readers who want a quest for a lost father set in a magical ancient China should be directed to Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix (2009) instead; save this one for a slow day. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6410-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
From England’s Children’s Laureate, a searing WWI-era tale of a close extended family repeatedly struck by adversity and injustice. On vigil in the trenches, 17-year-old Thomas Peaceful looks back at a childhood marked by guilt over his father’s death, anger at the shabby treatment his strong-minded mother receives from the local squire and others—and deep devotion to her, to his brain-damaged brother Big Joe, and especially to his other older brother Charlie, whom he has followed into the army by lying about his age. Weaving telling incidents together, Morpurgo surrounds the Peacefuls with mean-spirited people at home, and devastating wartime experiences on the front, ultimately setting readers up for a final travesty following Charlie’s refusal of an order to abandon his badly wounded brother. Themes and small-town class issues here may find some resonance on this side of the pond, but the particular cultural and historical context will distance the story from American readers—particularly as the pace is deliberate, and the author’s hints about where it’s all heading are too rare and subtle to create much suspense. (Fiction. 11-13, adult)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63648-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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