Cross steps up the pace and urgency in this gravely suspenseful second installment. When The Dark Ground (2004) ended, Robert had suddenly become normal-sized again, merging with the lethargic body that had continued his regular life while he was miniscule and surviving in the treacherous woods with other tiny people. His story here is told by his friend Tom, drawn into the cause by Robert and sister Emma. The alternating story is told by Lorn, tiny, back in the forest and struggling to survive the frigid winter in an underground cavern. When Tom stumbles upon a random classmate in possession of a 12-strand braid that only Lorn—or another version of Lorn—could know how to make, they follow a trail to a hidden abused girl who may be Lorn’s normal-sized counterpart. Their mission to reunite her with microscopic Lorn is desperate and dangerous. Readers now know what is going on, but still not how or why. A gripping page-turner that begs for the next volume. (Fantasy. YA)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-47487-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
Period English fantasy from the author of Snow White and Rose Red (1989), wherein young street waif Kim, a girl disguised as a boy, takes up with traveling magician Mairelon and his lugubrious coachman Hunch after she is paid by a toff to search Mairelon's wagon and is caught in the act. She agrees to travel with Mairelon, help with his staging, learn some real magic, and eventually assist in unravelling the story of the Saltesh Set, a magical array of silverware that Mairelon has been falsely accused of stealing. After a plot of inordinate complications, Kim learns that behind it all was an earl's ambitious wife whose purpose was to win the Post of Minister for Wizardry for her husband. Peopled by an instantly forgettable cast of thousands, and with a backdrop that makes no historical or fantastical impression or even sense: a dreary, juvenile nonentity.
Pub Date: June 19, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-85041-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Willis Holt’s When Zachary Beaver Came To Town (1999). (Fiction. 11-13)
Preachy, predictable tale of an overweight lad who saves the universe while gaining self-esteem—a large step back from
Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty (1993). The odd helmet that Arthur Woodbury, a.k.a. "Biscuit Butt," receives on his 11th birthday projects him into another world—but because he doesn’t read the instructions carefully, he opens a crack in the cosmos through which all-destroying Nothing begins to seep. Acquiring an inscrutable, monkey-like sidekick, Arthur is propelled into encounters with froglike Frog People, winged Cloud People, and other residents of REM World, all of whom bolster his self-confidence with platitudes ("You are whatever you think you are. What you believe yourself to be," etc.) and send him on his way to the demon Vydel, who alone can tell him how to get back to his own dimension. Even readers uncritical enough to enjoy the author’s lame efforts at wit—burps of epic proportion, avian monsters dubbed borons ("bird" + "moron")—will find Arthur’s adventures so obviously freighted with Purpose as to be almost devoid of danger or suspense. Unsurprisingly, he has only to envision home to be there—and when he wakes up, both the cloud of Nothing and his excess poundage have melted away. Look for more engaging aliens in books like Annette Curtis Klause’s Alien Secrets and a far more memorable fat kid in Kimberly
Willis Holt’s When Zachary Beaver Came To Town (1999). (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08362-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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