Weak writing and an unbelievable story—game over.
A boy battles giant robots to save his kidnapped friend.
As this series entry opens, the evil corporation Bionosoft’s system has crashed, and all the kids trapped in their video games are free—but so are the villains. When giant robots from “Super Bot World 3” capture Jesse’s best friend, Eric, Jesse, his classmate Mark, and an Australian girl named Sam risk their lives to rescue him before the bots blast him to the moon. In addition to the robot adversaries, hostile, suited men wielding threats of treason against the United States pursue the children. Readers new to the series might do well to follow instructions in the preface to read the first two books, as this one plunks them down in the middle of the action with just the barest bones of summary. Jesse, Eric, and Mark receive no character description at all apart from depictions in a few interior illustrations, leading to the likely assumption that they are all generic white boys. Sam, on the other hand, wears her hair in a blonde ponytail (according to the text; it’s presented inconsistently in the illustrations) and speaks in a “British-ish accent” or an “Australian way.” The setting includes improbable features, such as a mine underneath the Bionosoft headquarters, that make it a challenge to follow the story (but do make it feel a bit like a video game).
Weak writing and an unbelievable story—game over. (activity) (Science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4494-9623-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An inspirational exploration of caring among parent, teacher and child—one of Grimes’ best. (Poetry. 8-12)
In this delightfully spare narrative in verse, Coretta Scott King Award–winning Grimes examines a marriage’s end from the perspective of a child.
Set mostly in the wake of her father’s departure, only-child Gabby reveals with moving clarity in these short first-person poems the hardship she faces relocating with her mother and negotiating the further loss of a good friend while trying to adjust to a new school. Gabby has always been something of a dreamer, but when she begins study in her new class, she finds her thoughts straying even more. She admits: “Some words / sit still on the page / holding a story steady. / … / But other words have wings / that wake my daydreams. / They … / tickle my imagination, / and carry my thoughts away.” To illustrate Gabby’s inner wanderings, Grimes’ narrative breaks from the present into episodic bursts of vivid poetic reminiscence. Luckily, Gabby’s new teacher recognizes this inability to focus to be a coping mechanism and devises a daily activity designed to harness daydreaming’s creativity with a remarkably positive result for both Gabby and the entire class. Throughout this finely wrought narrative, Grimes’ free verse is tight, with perfect breaks of line and effortless shifts from reality to dream states and back.
An inspirational exploration of caring among parent, teacher and child—one of Grimes’ best. (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59078-985-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Nellie Bly’s contemporary namesake does her proud.
Eleven-year-old Nellie’s investigative reporting leads her to solve a mystery, start a newspaper, and learn key lessons about growing up.
Nellie’s voice is frank and often funny—and always full of information about newspapers. She tells readers of the first meeting of her newspaper club and then says, “But maybe I’m burying the lede…what Dad calls it when a reporter puts the most interesting part…in the middle or toward the end.” (This and other journalism vocabulary is formally defined in a closing glossary.) She backtracks to earlier that summer, when she and her mother were newly moved into a house next to her mother’s best friend in rural Bear Creek, Maine. Nellie explains that the newspaper that employed both of her parents in “the city” had folded soon after her father left for business in Asia. When Bear Creek Park gets closed due to mysterious, petty crimes, Nellie feels compelled to investigate. She feels closest to her dad when on the park’s swings, and she is more comfortable interviewing adults than befriending peers. Getting to know a plethora of characters through Nellie’s eyes is as much fun as watching Nellie blossom. Although astute readers will have guessed the park’s vandalizers, they are rewarded by observing Nellie’s fact-checking process. A late revelation about Nellie’s father does not significantly detract from this fully realized story of a young girl adjusting admirably to new circumstances. Nellie and her mother present white; secondary characters are diverse.
Nellie Bly’s contemporary namesake does her proud. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7624-9685-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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