Ghost story, detective adventure and good fun—but readers are advised to begin this entertaining series with volume one.
In this episode, apprentice detective Wilma Tenderfoot and her beagle, Pickle, meet a phony phantom and a genuine ghost, and Wilma moves a step further in her quest to solve the mysteries of her own origin.
Book three lives up to the promise of earlier series titles (The Case of the Frozen Hearts, 2011, etc.) with an appropriately convoluted plot, exaggerated characterizations, plenty of playful language and a ridiculous romance. The diminutive but dastardly Barbu D’Anvers reappears, bent on collecting a gambling debt, marrying swooning Belinda Blackheart and bumping off her parents so that he can inherit the family’s crumbling estate. Another pair of conspirators constructs an elaborate scheme to find treasure hidden at Blackheart Hoo and scare the owners out of hunting for it themselves. Kennedy reminds readers about the main characters and isolated setting on Cooper’s Island through an elaborate side exploration of the divided community’s curious history and traditions including the annual Brackle Day celebration. Villain D’Anvers never speaks plainly: He hisses, pants, screams and cackles. Wilma’s dog, Pickle, is embarrassingly outfitted in one outlandish getup after another; Inspector Lemone can’t stop thinking about food; and Detective Goodman solemnly smokes his rosemary pipe, before he identifies the perpetrators and reveals all. No real fatalities occur.
Ghost story, detective adventure and good fun—but readers are advised to begin this entertaining series with volume one. (Humorous mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: June 28, 2012
ISBN: 9789-0-8037-3542-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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
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