Uneven but exciting blend of anti-bullying PSA and Tolkien takeoff.
Boarding-school kid Chad thought that class bullies were bad enough, but then he falls into an alternate, magical realm, where he faces slavery (and worse) under predatory Orcs.
Though the title evokes a Piers Anthony “Xanth” whimsy, author Saur’s YA novel aspires to be serious business—perhaps excessively so, drawing upon themes of bullying, the horrors of slavery/human trafficking and violent death at the claws of cannibalistic creatures. Somehow, the genre-leaping stuff hangs together. After a heroic-fantasy opening in which a boy’s courage keeps the minion of an Orc master from getting a magic ring (yes, another one of those rings), we’re in contemporary Virginia. George Mason’s School of Boys is a rural boarding institution for castoff kids, mostly sons of dysfunctional rich families. In that environment, hazing and torment thrive under sadistic upperclassman Jason, protégé of the shady headmaster. Initially passive protagonist Chad is among a new class of 11- and 12-year-olds, deposited while his distant parents try to patch up their marriage. As his peers unite to stand up to Jason and his stooges, Chad keeps to himself. Half the book is a realistic narrative of the bullying (on an evolutionary scale below The Chocolate War) and the interconnected relationships of the young ensemble. Chad can no longer stay neutral when he gets pushed into a mysterious pool on the wooded school property. He finds himself in Eto, aka “Otherworld,” a Tolkienesque place occasionally open to Earth outsiders. He suffers brutal, degrading slavery in the thinly sketched society, where grotesque, man-eating Orcs (just like the ones in the movies, characters repeatedly say) are a coexisting race. Chad’s travails inspire a bloodthirsty Orc hunting-party invasion of George Mason’s School. This unites the boys, victimized and victimizer alike, against the fearsome foe. It’s a battle royal conveyed by Saur with considerable brio and deft action despite Orc fatalities far outnumbering the human ones (even a lucky BB-gun shot takes one monster out). That the storytelling is stronger than mere Peter Jackson fan-fiction helps canned lessons of teamwork, courage and bullying-is-bad go down better than a typical government-issued school lunch. But don’t go and make a Hobbit of it.
Uneven but exciting blend of anti-bullying PSA and Tolkien takeoff.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497398313
Page Count: 384
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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