A delightful heroine and an exciting mystery mostly manage to outshine tired, harmful disability tropes.
Morbid Myrtle, plucky aspiring investigator, must solve a dastardly railroad murder in late Victorian England.
Poor Myrtle. Father thinks she should have a holiday, because a 12-year-old girl needs some time away from solving murders. Horrors! He’s sending her off for “Family Amusements” at the seaside with Aunt Helena. Myrtle’s governess, Miss Judson, usually supportive of Myrtle’s unconventional interests, is a willing collaborator in the effort to keep Myrtle away from crime. When their train to the seaside is robbed, Myrtle is thrilled by the mentoring of a wonderful lady investigator. But the investigator herself is murdered, leaving Myrtle to find both the murderer and the jewel thief without assistance. In the forbidding, unwelcoming coastal town, Myrtle uncovers myriad disquieting mysteries. Each new revelation builds upon the prior discovery until the tense, wonderfully eerie climax on a ramshackle amusement pier. The sleuthing is heartwarming and funny, featuring strong women and girls, packed with characters who genuinely care about each other. Myrtle’s story would be an undiluted treat, if only there weren’t plot points hinging upon insidious stereotypes about how disabled people’s bodies function and others’ right to know details about their abilities. Myrtle and most characters are White; Miss Judson is a Black woman from French Guiana; and a local teen photographer who befriends Myrtle is brown-skinned.
A delightful heroine and an exciting mystery mostly manage to outshine tired, harmful disability tropes. (historical note) (Historical mystery. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-919-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist.
This is the way Pearl’s world ends: not with a bang but with a scream.
Pearl Moran was born in the Lancaster Avenue branch library and considers it more her home than the apartment she shares with her mother, the circulation librarian. When the head of the library’s beloved statue of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is found to be missing, Pearl’s scream brings the entire neighborhood running. Thus ensues an enchanting plunge into the underbelly of a failing library and a city brimful of secrets. With the help of friends old, uncertainly developing, and new, Pearl must spin story after compelling story in hopes of saving what she loves most. Indeed, that love—of libraries, of books, and most of all of stories—suffuses the entire narrative. Literary references are peppered throughout (clarified with somewhat superfluous footnotes) in addition to a variety of tangential sidebars (the identity of whose writer becomes delightfully clear later on). Pearl is an odd but genuine narrator, possessed of a complex and emotional inner voice warring with a stridently stubborn outer one. An array of endearing supporting characters, coupled with a plot both grounded in stressful reality and uplifted by urban fantasy, lend the story its charm. Both the neighborhood and the library staff are robustly diverse. Pearl herself is biracial; her “long-gone father” was black and her mother is white. Bagley’s spot illustrations both reinforce this and add gentle humor.
The magic of reading is given a refreshingly real twist. (reading list) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6952-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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