Charming and funny, this winning adventure also finds time for its middle school sleuths to develop real maturity
John Watson’s known minisleuth Shelby Holmes for only three weeks, but he already knows sixth grade will be significantly enlivened with Shelby’s cases to solve.
John, an Army brat settled down for the first time, makes friends easily in his new Harlem magnet school for the arts. But though he loves his new multiethnic crew—they play video games, shoot hoops, and discuss Mozart sonatas and modern art—he can’t deny the thrill of solving cases. Even when Shelby is patronizing (always!) or rude to their clients (also always!), John’s excited, but maybe taking a case for their teacher who doesn’t want their help is just a tad over the line. To investigate a villainous private school headmistress, John and Shelby go undercover, Shelby disguised as prim little “Basia Rathbone” in one of several in-jokes for adult readers. John worries about lying to his mother as well as about being a black boy undercover in a rich neighborhood (something that doesn’t occur to Shelby, who’s white), but it doesn’t occur to him to worry about his diabetes. And it doesn’t occur to either of them that anyone could get the better of Shelby, until they meet nasty and brilliant, rich, olive-skinned Moira Hardy.
Charming and funny, this winning adventure also finds time for its middle school sleuths to develop real maturity . (Mystery. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68119-054-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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