Fans of Dan Poblocki, John Bellairs, and R.L. Stine will all be right at home and smiling at the shivers (and the jokes).
Ghosts and zombies and boa constrictors, oh my!
Spaulding Meriweather has moved around a lot with his great-aunt Gwendolyn. She used to home-school him between writing her bestselling mysteries, but now that they have moved to her girlhood hometown, Thedgeroot, he has started attending sixth grade at public school. Making friends is not his strong suit; he’s a little odd, just like his parents, who have a specious paranormal-investigations television show that keeps them too busy to care for him. Complicating matters, he is pretty sure he saw a zombie—er, revenant—in the woods outside of town, and someone is stealing bodies from the local cemetery. Then he meets the ghost next door, Mr. Radzinsky, who was eaten by his own boa constrictor. Spaulding contacts his parents, but he has cried spook before; they won’t come. He decides to go it alone and investigate the zombies and the not-so-abandoned Slecht-Tech factory nearby…well, not alone. There’s fourth-grade neighbor Lucy Bellwood and her older sister, Marietta, and another classmate, Kenny Lin—and Mr. Radzinsky seems keen to help as well. Author/illustrator Mitchell’s debut is spooky and sarcastic. Her occasional illustrations (purportedly culled from Spaulding’s notebook, complete with funny captions) are an added bonus. They depict Spaulding as white and Lucy and Marietta as black; Kenny is cued as Asian.
Fans of Dan Poblocki, John Bellairs, and R.L. Stine will all be right at home and smiling at the shivers (and the jokes). (Suspense. 8-12)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4549-2785-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Contagiously goofy and fun.
Area 51 gets its first new resident in 5 years—and a new mystery.
When her grandma moves into a kid-free retirement home, 12-year-old orphan Priya “Sky” Patel-Baum and Spike, her pet hedgehog, relocate to Area 51 to live with Sky’s eccentric Uncle Anish. At 51, humans and Break Throughs (government-speak for aliens) live together off-grid in harmony. Unfortunately, several Zdstrammars (one of many Break Through species) mysteriously disappear, disrupting the base’s harmony and contributing to feelings of suspicion. Despite being deputy head of the Federal Bureau of Alien Investigations, Uncle Anish becomes a prime suspect. Can Sky and Elvis, her alien classmate, prove Uncle Anish’s innocence and find the missing Zdstrammars before it’s too late? YA author Buxbaum’s middle-grade debut is a rip-roaring series opener complete with over-the-top characters and jokes galore. Naidu’s black-and-white cartoon illustrations extend the comedy with ongoing commentary that smartly interacts with the prose. The cast of Break Through species—like Audiotooters, Galzorian, and Sanitizoria—have hilariously creative on-the-nose names with illustrations to match. Sky is coded biracial, with a White dad and Indian mom. Aliens appear in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors; Elvis shape-shifts but looks like a brown-skinned boy to Sky. Though the main mystery is neatly wrapped up, the cliffhanger ending promises more laughs.
Contagiously goofy and fun. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42946-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans.
Only children, rejoice! A cozy mystery just for you! (People with siblings will probably enjoy it too.)
Debut novelist Cornett introduces the One and Onlys, a trio of mystery-solving only kids: Gloria Longshanks “Shanks” Hill, Alexander “Peephole” Calloway, and narrator Paul (alas, no nickname) Marconi. The trio has a knack for finding and solving low-level mysteries, but they come up against a true head-scratcher when the yard of a resident of their small town is covered in rubber ducks overnight. Working ahead of Officer Portnoy, who’s a little on the slow side, can Paul, Shanks, and Peephole solve the mystery? Cornett has a lot of fun with this adventure, dropping additional side mysteries, a subplot about small businesses, big corporations, and economics, and a town’s love of bratwurst into the mix. Most importantly, he plays fair with the clues throughout, allowing astute readers to potentially solve the case ahead of the trio. The tone and mystery are perfect for younger readers who want to test their detective skills but are put off by anything scary or gory. The pacing would serve well for chapter-by-chapter read-alouds. If there are any quibbles, it’s the lack of diversity of the cast, as it defaults white. Diversity exists in small towns, and this one is crying out for more. Hopefully a sequel will introduce additional faces.
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-3003-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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