The important topic of physical and emotional abuse in families is sensitively portrayed; the intertwined fantasy is at...
Two sisters who use stories and spells to cope with family dysfunction discover a river-dominated dream world.
Twelve-year-old narrator Eleanor reveals that Poppa is a batterer. Momma, his enabler and most frequent victim, replaces what Poppa breaks and rigidly disciplines the girls. Wilde perceptively etches Eleanor’s attempts to insulate Mike, 7, within their violent, secretive home, where “house magic” prevails if the girls obey the rules. When a mysterious river infiltrates their under-the-bed hideout, the girls enter a world with a caretaker Heron, nightmare horses, leak-patching crabs, and more. Anassa, a snake-headed monster working to breach the boundary between worlds with the ‘mares, exploits Eleanor’s anxieties. Leaks appear in the sisters’ and neighbors’ homes, mirroring Anassa’s fractious progress. The sisters’ back-and-forth questing to reconcile both worlds by replacing Momma’s old glass fishing float—a “witch ball” broken by Poppa—vividly culminates during a storm, in which netherworld birds help the girls fight back invading Anassa. The real-world plotting—including a tentative new relationship with their mother’s mother and Eleanor’s growing friendship with neighbor Pendra—is finely wrought. The allegorical fantasy elements, while propulsive, lack a strong controlling logic and require considerable credulity from readers, as Eleanor uncannily navigates the river world’s inchoate dangers. The sisters are assumed white, while Pendra is described as brown and is probably of South Asian descent.
The important topic of physical and emotional abuse in families is sensitively portrayed; the intertwined fantasy is at times a distraction. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3372-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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