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
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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