Cliffhangers and elephants will keep readers engaged.
Sam, nearly 14, has spent her life living and working with her father on a North American elephant sanctuary. Elephantine changes are brewing.
Sam knows how to drive a truck, toss bales of hay, and communicate effectively with elephants. Everything has been wonderful except for the sanctuary’s financial struggles, but now an anonymous sponsor has donated a huge sum of money to artificially inseminate three female elephants, and Daisy Mae is carrying a baby. Meanwhile, Sam is uncomfortable to the point of rudeness around impeccably dressed Joyce, her father’s lawyer and love interest. Each plotline has something in it to challenge readers. Animal lovers may wince at the Caesarian section that kills Daisy Mae; for feminists, some of the ways in which Sam and Joyce bond may elicit cringes. (Isn’t it enough that both of them care deeply about both Jack and the elephants?) Motherless Sam’s nurturing of the new elephant orphan adds poignancy. Fascinating elephant information is sometimes awkwardly inserted into dialogue but at other times is gracefully delivered by Sam’s direct address to readers. After a stunning revelation almost 200 pages into the book—which nudges the genre toward science fiction—the plot becomes more intriguing. Will the rich, eccentric James Mercury help or hinder Sam and Jack? What will be the fate of Burma, a newly arrived elephant with a history of dangerous behavior? Characters are default white except for one dark-skinned vet.
Cliffhangers and elephants will keep readers engaged. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-79617-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center.
Armed only with her magical sewing needle, foundling mouse Delphine sets out to confront the cruel rat king in this duology closer.
As vicious rat armies pillage the mouse realms in search of her and her pointy, long-hidden treasure, Delphine finds herself waging an inner war that parallels the outer one. According to dusty documents and other reputable sources, the needle’s good powers can be perverted, but she sees no other way except killing to stop evil rat King Midnight. While struggling with a grim determination to go over to the dark side that sets her at odds with her own fundamentally loving nature, Delphine threads her way along with loyal allies past various scrapes—only to come, climactically, face to face with not only her nemesis, but her own past. Moon stitches in flashbacks to fill out the details of a tragic old love triangle that reaches its fruition here and sews her tale up with a return to Château Desjardins just in time for Cinderella’s wedding and a celebratory rodentine ball in the chandelier overhead, and she leaves a fringe of epilogue hinting at further installments to come.
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center. (secret codes) (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-04833-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A charming series opener.
A foundling mouse sets out to uncover the mystery of her origins and of the magical needle sized for humans that was left with her.
Delphine’s travels begin with a summons to the palace, where her growing reputation as a brilliant seamstress commands an order for a ball gown for Princess Petits-Oiseaux—and also gives her a chance to discover exciting hints about a vanished order of needle-wielding magic mice known as the Threaded and of an ancient war with the rats. Meanwhile, no sooner does Midnight, cruel king of the rats, learn that the needle they have been seeking for a century has been found than said old war suddenly heats up and turns into a deadly chase. Also meanwhile, only barely noticed by the animal cast but sure to snag readers’ attention, certain events involving another seamstress, a pumpkin coach, a ball, a prince, and a glass slipper are happening above the floorboards in the parallel human world. That isn’t the only sly touch in this bibbidi bobbidi debut, which is rich in clearly delineated character types, features plenty of brisk action, and is also, overall, more than a bit reminiscent in tone and setting to Brian Jacques’ Redwall series (though with more focus on fashion than food). While this volume is mostly setup, heroes and villains alike end up on their marks, and plenty of loose ends remain to stitch up later.
A charming series opener. (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-368-04802-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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