by D.J. MacHale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016
Readers will be rooting for this tenacious kid as he keeps a steady head and stays just a step or two ahead of creepy beings...
Marcus O’Mara’s world is turned upside down when he begins to see frightening apparitions while at school serving detention.
The ghostly sightings increase as the white 13-year-old discovers that he is being hunted by a mysterious old woman. She confronts him, demanding that he “surrender the key.” Unable to turn to his adopted parents, who he feels hate him, Marcus shares the haunting visitations with his two closest friends, Lu, an Asian girl with a roller-derby aesthetic, and Theo, a buttoned-up black boy. (Marcus reflects, “It would be a grand slam if we had a Hispanic friend. Or maybe a Tongan.") Following clues left by a ghost in a bathrobe, Marcus learns of his secret connection to an ancient curse, one that leads him to a doorway to which he is the only keyholder. This doorway leads to a library of unfinished stories of the dead. Marcus must find the answers to keep his loved ones from harm, and that means opening the door to the shadowed past of his birth parents. MacHale deftly pulls readers into this page-turning adventure, well-choreographed chapter transitions defying them to put it down. The likable, feisty Marcus narrates, following a prologue that sets up the rest of the book.
Readers will be rooting for this tenacious kid as he keeps a steady head and stays just a step or two ahead of creepy beings conjured from a supernatural world. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93253-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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by Stuart Gibbs ; illustrated by Anjan Sarkar ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Will satisfy fans but could be better.
Young CIA agent-in-training Benjamin Ripley switches sides—or is he just going undercover?—in this graphic version of the third Spy School caper.
Sticking to the plot of the 2015 original, this episode sees the talented math whiz recruited by nefarious organization SPYDER after being (unjustly, he fumes) kicked out of the CIA’s academy. While training in a hidden school for evildoers with other prospective villains, including Ashley Sparks, a gushy former competitive gymnast with a fondness for portmanteau words (sweet + awesome = swawesome), Ben gets wind of a dastardly scheme to make billions on government construction projects. Hot if inept pursuit by both rival espionage agencies takes Ben from a secret underground command center to the top of the Statue of Liberty. But while the action has a rapid flow in the art (Sarkar is good at portraying fights, high-speed chases, and explosions), several characters are drawn with generic features and such a limited range of expressions that even with help from the cast gallery, it’s hard to tell them apart easily. Still, along with coming through in the suspenseful climax—thanks to clever deductions and quick thinking—by the end, Ben has also achieved a long-sought breakthrough with Erica Hale (code name “Ice Queen”), a superbly omnicompetent schoolmate who has his heart as well as his back. The cast largely presents white.
Will satisfy fans but could be better. (Graphic thriller. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781665931946
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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