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THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF LEON (I MEAN NOEL)

"Noel glub C blub all. . . I glub new. . . ." These are the last words that Mrs. Carillon hears from her sinking husband before she herself is hit on the head by their capsizing boat and the two of them are taken to the hospital. They are also the first words she has heard from him since they were married at five and seven to cement a soup factory partnership and the young husband was sent away to school, but the devoted Mrs. Carillon spends the next 21 years assiduously searching for Leon (or Noel, as he calls himself) and trying to solve the glub-blubs. She glimpses him once in Bloomingdale's, but he's on the down escalator and she's on the up, and her attempts to get to him only result in her being sent to the Women's House of Detention for inciting to riot. It would be impossible to summarize subsequent events, which progress from the ridiculous to the preposterous, and equally unsporting to disclose the puzzle's solution (which hinges on a horse named Christmas Bells**), but with the help of childhood friend Augie Kunkel (a stammering crossword puzzle-maker whose avocation is nouns) and her adopted twins Tony and Tina, all ends happily at Thanksgiving dinner with a double wedding, a cellmates' reunion, and the promise of fame and fortune all round. The story is as current as the shaved and saffron-robed protesters who help "Free Mrs. Carillon" (or "Free the Orphans' Mother") from the Pest Hole, the pictures (made of words and asterisks) are part of the werbal fun, and the whole's a flamboyantly nimble farce. **a clue

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1971

ISBN: 0525423699

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 8, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971

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HOLES

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...

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  • Newbery Medal Winner

Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).

Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5

Page Count: 233

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

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THE SHERLOCK SOCIETY

From the Sherlock Society series , Vol. 1

An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate.

Toxic waste dumped in the Everglades gives a quartet of middle school sleuths their first case.

Leading Carl Hiaasen fans over familiar ground, Ponti pitches 12-year-old Alex Sherlock and his 13-year-old sister, Zoe, with school friends Lina and Yadi as sidekicks, into a summer caper. It all begins with the hunt for a supposed fortune buried decades ago by Al Capone, culminates in a narrow escape from an exploding yacht, and ultimately exposes a smooth-talking bad actor shady enough to bring in even federal authorities. As the kids’ live-in Grandpa, a retired investigative reporter, delivers pointers on how to conduct interviews and sift evidence while grandly driving them around South Florida in his classic Cadillac, Roberta, the budding detectives display sharp wits, eyes, and negotiating skills. The last come in particularly useful when they’re dealing with their lawyer…who’s also their mom. Both the plot and the chain of evidence take logical courses, and since Dad is a marine biologist and Lina’s a recent transplant from Wyoming, Ponti is able to use their dialogue to highlight the local culture and larger ecological issues. Main characters present white, apart from tech wiz Yadi, who is cued Latine.

An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate. (Mystery. 9-13)

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024

ISBN: 9781665932530

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Aladdin

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

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