One last exhilarating ride: “Ga GOOO ga!!!!” (Fantasy. 10-12)
The third and (probably) final “official” sequel to Ian Fleming’s classic sends the redoubtable roadster careening off the planet as well as through time.
Following much travel through various eras in previous episodes, the story opens with the dramatic conversion of Big Ben and its tower to a rocket ship. Cottrell Boyce assembles his expanded cast of passengers—the Pott family from the original novel, the latter-day Tootings, and archvillains Tiny Jack and the Nanny—aboard Tiny Jack’s orbiting estate, the Château Bateau, for a climactic faceoff. There, the terrible tyke has gathered all sorts of earthly landmarks from Stonehenge to the pyramids. Now he needs only Apollo 15’s lunar rover to complete his collection of the world’s most expensive stolen cars. Can even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the original “smart car,” get everything and everyone back to their proper times and places? Well-stocked with thrills, from a high-speed ride with the queen of England (“and Lots of Other Places”) to a game of Snakes and Ladders played with real snakes, the daffy series zooms to its finish line in suitable high-octane style. Berger’s droll character and spot vignettes add plenty of carbonation.
One last exhilarating ride: “Ga GOOO ga!!!!” (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5983-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation.
The fourth wall suffers major breaches as young characters from a popular fantasy series and the "real real world" join forces to battle threats in both.
Born of a real mother and a fictional dad, Bethany has been searching for her father ever since he disappeared into a book on her fourth birthday. When classmate Owen sees her materializing out of a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she unwillingly acquires a gobsmacked ally who persuades her to pick up a finding spell from the cliffhanger scene at the end of Volume 6 in his adored Kiel Gnomenfoot series. Owen tags along to do the unthinkable: change the plot by saving the Dumbledore-ish Magister from death at the hands of mad scientist and archvillain Dr. Verity. Crises snowball as Owen finds himself caught in a climactic battle between Magic and Science in the yet-to-be-published seventh volume. Meanwhile, Bethany is left on this side of the printed page to somehow prevent the Magister, enraged by the revelation that he's fictional, from freeing all made-up people and creatures and exiling their creators into a storybook to see how they like having no free will. Riley concocts a tasty mix of familiar tropes and truly inventive twists for his Gnomenfoot scenario plus a set of broadly rendered scene stealers for a supporting cast. For a plot, he dishes up a nonstop barrage of situational pickles for his increasingly desperate protagonists.
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0919-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
This middle-grade read is heartfelt, but nostalgia that’s a bit too on the nose makes it hard to follow
Twelve-year-old aspiring astronaut Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman is lonely and homesick in New York.
When trouble hits her family like an asteroid, Ebony-Grace, aka Cadet E-Grace Starfleet, is forced to leave her beloved grandfather and her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, to spend a week with her father in Harlem, New York—or as she calls it, “No Joke City.” Determined to ignore what she calls the “Sonic Boom,” New York’s hip-hop revolution in the early 1980s, Ebony-Grace rejects the people, music, and movements of Harlem, instead blasting off in her mind aboard the Mothership Uhura to save her grandfather, Capt. Fleet. Stuck, Ebony-Grace works to navigate a new frontier where she is teased and called “crazy” because of her imaginative intergalactic adventures. Ostracized as a flava-less, “plain ol’ ice cream sandwich! Chocolate on the outside, vanilla on the inside,” Ebony-Grace tries her best to be “regular and normal,” but her outer-space imaginings are the only things that keep her grounded. The design includes images that sho nuff bring the ’80s alive: comic-strip panels, inverted Star Wars scripting, and onomatopoeic graffiti-esque words. Unfortunately, these serve to interrupt an already-crowded narrative as readers hyperjump between Ebony-Grace’s imagination and the movement of life in the real world, transmitted via news reports and subway memorials.
This middle-grade read is heartfelt, but nostalgia that’s a bit too on the nose makes it hard to follow . (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-18735-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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