Tasty in bits, but even Pottermanes may find this indigestible in quantity.
Everything entering students need to know, from class and holiday schedules to notable ghosts and headmasters and headmistresses.
Compiled by a team of MuggleNet editors, this fourth annual entry in the Unofficial Harry Potter Reference Library mines the Potterverse’s books, films, games, discussion boards, and possibly even pensieves for fictive “facts” about the school’s buildings, grounds, curriculum, history, and prominent residents—living and otherwise. The entries are thoroughly spoileriffic, but that hardly matters as there are no illustrations, and only rabid fans are going to last long plowing through wearisomely detailed prose descriptions of the Hogwarts crest and official song, the castle’s common rooms and corridors…not to mention numerous exhaustive lists, from the names and injuries of everyone ever sent to the hospital wing and every offense, real or imagined, for which students were docked points to all the shops and inns in the adjacent village of Hogsmeade. The content is unsourced and neither indexed nor systematically organized. Still, readers who would delight in seeing the Battle of Hogwarts recapped as a timeline along with, for instance, learning where Hogwarts is and how it got its name will be in their glory. As in the original series, the cast’s racial makeup defaults to White.
Tasty in bits, but even Pottermanes may find this indigestible in quantity. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-948174-95-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Media Lab Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Stronger in character than plot but spooky in parts.
An old Colorado hotel with dark secrets and a brooding horror novelist as its caretaker make a properly atmospheric setting for a young filmmaker’s latest project.
Fresh from the cinematic escapades of Shark Summer (2021), teenage documentarian Elijah Jones arrives in Estes Park thinking he’s been invited to record a rare interview with famous recluse Jack Axworth—but he’s actually been summoned to make a biopic of the novelist, who has young-onset dementia. Once again, the footage Elijah ends up with tells more than the story he set out to make, as Axworth’s poignant reminiscences and increasingly erratic behavior become inextricably mixed with a portrait of a struggling town whose history and very survival center on the nearby Underlook Hotel, a closed-up resort haunted by tales of supernatural evil and slated for imminent demolition. Is there time to save it? The storyline struggles to advance through thickets of subplots and hints, but the Underlook’s deadline adds enough suspense to keep readers interested, and the hotel turns out to have hidden levels and treasures to be discovered when the action flags. Also, Marcks trots out such an engaging supporting cast, led by local teen engineering whiz Suzy Hess and including colorful characters like a ghost hunter with a truly creepy crow, that watching the ensemble in action is pleasurable enough. Finished art was not seen, but Elijah and another significant character present as Black in the otherwise White cast.
Stronger in character than plot but spooky in parts. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-27806-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
An intense referendum on football’s dangers and glories.
A star 12-year-old quarterback has a championship to win, a developing family tragedy to cope with, and a life-changing decision to make.
Barely disguising the autobiographical elements contained here in the wake of his own diagnosis of ALS, former Atlanta Falcons player Green places his protagonist, Ben Redd, in a football family and on an upstate New York team coached by his dad and two older brothers—all former gridiron stars themselves. Ben’s anticipation as he looks forward to a season that will be capped by a game against archrival Penn Yan battles with his terror as he watches his father’s NFL injuries come home to roost in slurred speech, loss of physical coordination, and, eventually, a frantic trip to the hospital for an emergency tracheotomy. But as Ben’s parents, both iron willed, clash over whether he should be allowed to follow the family career path (and one of his brothers even announces that none of his kids will ever play), the sport’s allure comes through in a series of exciting clashes, with Ben and wonderfully hard-nosed new teammate, Thea Jean, leading the on-field heroics on the way to a last-yard, smash-mouth finale that leaves him dazed and exultant, with a broken finger, a probable concussion…and a choice of futures. Though the cast is mostly male and mostly White, between them, Thea and Ben’s mom add strong female representation.
An intense referendum on football’s dangers and glories. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-248595-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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