Squired by rival sibs who are, at worst, frenemies, this dizzy tour mixes glimpses of glossy and relatively obscure Big...
Plush-toy abuse, a sudden jelly bean shortage, severe rule-bending, and several near riots punctuate a helter-skelter scavenger hunt as the preteen Tapper twins again go head-to-head (The Tapper Twins Go to War (with Each Other), 2015).
What starts out as a well-meant fundraiser for a food bank quickly devolves into warfare as, for a prize of four front-row seats at any upcoming Madison Square Garden event (!), the students of Upper East Side’s Culver Prep Middle School team up and fan out with an excellent (if Manhattan-centric) list of New York City sites famous and obscure to visit and small artifacts to gather. The story is cast as a multivoiced oral-history transcript with interspersed texts, bulletin board exchanges, documents, maps, side comments, and snapshot photos. The hunt takes driven sixth-grade president Claudia Tapper’s team from Bloomingdale’s (“photo of a price tag for item over $100,000”) to a hyperexclusive eatery in Greenwich Village, while her twin, Reese, and his short-attention-span buddies ramble around lower Manhattan, with a brief interlude locked (long story) in a New Jersey–bound delivery truck. By day’s end it looks like the snotty and unscrupulous Fembot clique has copped the tickets—but Rodkey works several ingenious twists into the climax to put the win into the unlikeliest of hands. And seeing certain badly behaved parent chaperones receive just deserts adds to the fun.
Squired by rival sibs who are, at worst, frenemies, this dizzy tour mixes glimpses of glossy and relatively obscure Big Apple attractions with mishaps aplenty but no (permanent) harm done. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-38029-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A few moments of manufactured drama aside, a ragged chain of set pieces.
A late-blooming urban mosquito meets his country-raised half brother for the first time.
The storyline wanders as aimlessly as a mosquito in the breeze. Last of his 401-sibling family to be born, Dinnn Needles is both puny and so afraid of falling that he walks everywhere—at least until bullies push him into a sewer and he has to shed his beloved but wing-pinning leather jacket to survive. Then he and his clan hitch a minivan ride to the swampy lake where his mother had seen all but one of her first set of offspring eaten by dragonflies. There he meets hulking but friendly Gus, who leads a nighttime expedition past sleeping pondhawks to a carnival. When the outing runs long, Dinnn and Gus are forced to run the dragonfly gantlet. Having acquitted himself nobly, Dinnn rejoins his family for the ride home and learns a family secret (that readers will have known for a while). Ondaatje adds humorous chapter heads like “Crouching Mosquito, Hidden Dragonfly,” a mix of real and fancied mosquito lore, and a natural-history quiz at the end (with answers to be found online). Neither these nor Salcedo’s pictures of pensive, popeyed, pointy-nosed buglets inject enough juice to get this anemic tale off the ground.
A few moments of manufactured drama aside, a ragged chain of set pieces. (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55498-437-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s a jumble, but one that’s made up of feel-good set pieces.
In this second sequel to the Newbery Honor–winning Savvy (2008), the Beaumont family’s unusual abilities turn inside out. Steep learning curves and near catastrophes ensue.
Just as the Beaumonts decide to take in ill-tempered Grandma Pat, who is showing worrisome signs of “Old-Timer’s disease” (i.e., Alzheimer’s), 13-year-old Gypsy’s new “savvy” to glimpse (but not alter, despite her best efforts) future scenes switches to an ability to stop time—for all the universe except, as it turns out, Pat and everyone else who shares her birthday. Likewise, her formerly perfect mother turns accident-prone, her once-invisible big brother now unpredictably bursts into all-too-visible flame, and little Tucker farts and turns into a giant when upset. Nonetheless, the Beaumonts hie off to Colorado to pick up Grandma Pat and then chase her through Denver when she wanders out into a snowstorm. Law does not write for readers who like logically consistent premises and orderly plots. Nevertheless, along with turning her increasingly self-confident protagonist’s fondness for spontaneous twirling into a thematic leitmotif, she salts the narrative with wonderfully silly words (“Sardoodledom”!) and the cast with (aside from a now-requisite bully) helpful, warmhearted allies.
It’s a jumble, but one that’s made up of feel-good set pieces. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3862-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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