A solid first effort from an aspiring young author, despite flaws and an uncertain intended audience.
Debut author Scanio’s YA tale of a young wolf who vows to take revenge against the pack that killed her family.
Luna is making preparations for her little brother’s coming-of-age howling ceremony when a sudden forest fire has her fleeing for her life. Once the fire dies down, she returns to her territory but is unable to find her family. She then travels and meets another wolf, Na’vi, who informs her that her family was killed. Na’vi also later reveals that his own family was murdered by the Desert Valley Pack, and he smelled traces of the pack’s scent around the bodies of Luna’s dead family. Luna and Na’vi eventually meet another wolf, Caleb, and his pack, and Caleb tells Luna and Na’vi that the Desert Valley Pack murdered his father, too. Later, they learn that Caleb’s brother, Bullet, is a traitor working for the Desert Valley Pack. Together, Caleb, Luna, Na’vi and their new friends vow to exact revenge against their shared enemies. After a series of skirmishes, the final battle looms. Luna’s story certainly has the potential to be a captivating one, as Luna makes friends with other wronged wolves on her path to revenge. However, the simplistic prose can be clunky at times, and scads of exposition tend to bury the narrative, leaving the characters short on depth and difficult to distinguish from one another. To be fair, some wolves do stand out, especially Blade, the black wolf with the rotten attitude. And sometimes Scanio lets her characters emote quite beautifully: “Tears ran down [Luna’s] muzzle,” she writes. “She lay down on the ground and covered her eyes with her paws.” But as a whole, the wolves aren’t particularly memorable characters, and readers will be left feeling little in the way of empathy as the wolves proceed to kill one another. The recurring violence may also be at odds with the narrative’s intended audience; the prose style and length suggest the story is meant to be cataloged as a chapter book, but it’s difficult to imagine parents of beginning readers being OK, for example, with Bullet snapping his own father’s neck.
A solid first effort from an aspiring young author, despite flaws and an uncertain intended audience.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8290-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note.
Little Honey Bunny Funnybunny loves baseball almost as much as she loves her big brother P.J.—though it’s a close-run thing.
Readers familiar with the pranks P.J. plays on his younger sibling in older episodes of the series (most illustrated by Roger Bollen) will be amused—and perhaps a little confused—to see him in the role of perfect big brother after meeting his swaddled little sister for the first time in mama’s lap. But here, along with being a constant companion and “always happy to see her,” he cements his heroic status in her eyes by hitting a home run for his baseball team and then patiently teaching her how to play T-ball. After carefully coaching her and leading her through warm-up exercises, he even sits in the stands, loudly cheering her on as she scores the winning run in her own very first game. “‘You are the best brother a bunny could ever have!’” she burbles. This tale’s a tad blander compared with others centered on P.J. and his sister, but it’s undeniably cheery, with text well structured for burgeoning readers. The all-smiles animal cast in Bowers’ cartoon art features a large and diversely hued family of bunnies sporting immense floppy ears as well as a multispecies crowd of furry onlookers equally varied of color, with one spectator in a wheelchair.
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217032464
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.
One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.
It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Robin Corey/Random
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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