by Doreen D. Berger ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A cozy family adventure that’s sometimes overly superficial.
A space captain’s daughters are kidnapped in this debut middle-grade SF novel.
Twelve-year-old sisters Diane and Robin were born eight months apart to Daniel and Beth Marsh, but their parents died in an interplanetary war when they were babies. Daniel’s brother, Capt. William Marsh, adopted the sisters. While they were first raised by his parents on their ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, they’ve been living with William on his spaceships since they were 5 years old. He often needs to rein in their mischief and impose discipline when they stubbornly insist on not following rules, but he does so with love. In March 2297, the tweens are exploring an area around their grandparents’ ranch when a transporter beam suddenly whisks them away. They find themselves imprisoned on an alien vessel by Cmdr. Blassen, whose people—the Mog—were conquered by the warmongering Frazon, enemies of the League of Universal Planets, to which Earth belongs. Having discovered a portal between parallel universes, Blassen has concocted a villainous scheme to kidnap children in one and sell them in the other. Usually he nabs infants, but he’s taken the sisters to fulfill a special order from the Frazon imperial governor, Gen. Malon, who seeks revenge against William; the captain led the battle that killed his son. Blassen has a double cross in mind that will allow him to keep Malon’s stealth-technology bounty while selling Diane and Robin and pocketing the money. Although the resourceful sisters manage to escape to an LUP space station and then the Marsh ranch, their troubles are just beginning. They never existed in this universe, and no one knows them, including this world’s William. Reuniting the family will present multiple challenges—and Blassen still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Berger sets her book in a Star Trek–like world, with technology such as phasers, transporter beams, starbases, equivalents for the holodeck and the turbolift, and so on, giving the cosmos a familiar feeling. The heart of the story, though, lies less in SF elements than in family relations. Vignettes from the past show William and his adopted daughters navigating the girls’ frequent testing of his limits, which he meets with fatherly justice. The abduction allows the parallel universe’s childless William to learn what he’s lost by not having kids to teach him patience and open him up emotionally. But the mischief/discipline scenario becomes repetitive, and despite the sisters’ hijinks, the novel provides little to characterize the girls except that Diane likes to read and Robin’s hobby is geology. At times, the style feels unnaturally slick, as in “Some even paused to watch the merry scene,” or generic: “The girls enjoyed living in space and they loved being with their father.” Similarly, overused dialogue tags (“teased with a grin”; “asked pleadingly”) slow down the pace and give an artificial tinge to the writing, analogous to adding a laugh track. They tell rather than show.
A cozy family adventure that’s sometimes overly superficial.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elinor Teele ; illustrated by Ben Whitehouse ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2016
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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by Elinor Teele
by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2013
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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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey
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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ; color by Jose Garibaldi & Wes Dzioba
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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ; color by Jose Garibaldi
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