Here’s hoping the next installment in this series achieves a better balance.
In this sequel to Curse of the Boggin (2016), Marcus (white), Theo (African-American), and Lu (Asian-American) are back.
Strange disruptions have beset Coppell Middle School in Massachusetts, some distance from Marcus’ home in Stony Brook, Connecticut, and Marcus’ first assignment as an agent of the Library is to find out what’s going on. At Coppell, the three friends go undercover, befriending Ainsley Murcer, the feisty eighth-grade class president, who seems to always be around when a violent disruption occurs. After following a white wolf into the surrounding forest, both Marcus and Ainsley are confronted by a witch who informs the white girl that she has been chosen by a coven as its high priestess. Ainsley’s connection to the coven, along with the disruptions at the school, was activated with the onset of her menses. If Ainsley goes through with the priestess ritual on the night of the black moon, or Halloween, the coven will be poised to take over the world. As an agent of the Library and holder of the Paradox key, Marcus is the only one who can stop them. Despite solid folkloric grounding, delving into blood-related connections to witchcraft feels out of step for the light adventure series. Still, MacHale once again pens a page-turner that adds just the right amount of humor from narrator Marcus to buoy the mood.
Here’s hoping the next installment in this series achieves a better balance. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93257-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
PROFILES
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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