Skip.
Lucy Moon, an aspiring horse rustler from Georgia, teams up with fashionista Flor Bernoulli from New York City to outwit the tiny Square Man, who wants to destroy all the curves in the universe.
In this disjointed sequel to The Secret Spiral (2011), the two 10-year-olds, previously strangers, discover that they were destined to become pals and partners in saving the world from Square Man’s twisted designs. From Puddleville, Ga., and Brooklyn, N.Y., the two are transported to Planet Square along with Lucy’s ice-block manufacturing father, Buddy Moon, and Flor’s pie-making friend, Dr. Pi, who guards the Spiral. They befriend their lobster guard, Red Eye, escape thanks to the relationship between golden rectangles and spirals, travel through several worlds and convert their captor. Rather than building to a climax, the contrived plot collapses, leaving the wooden characters back in Georgia, asleep. The author tells, rather than showing, recapping the back stories in lengthy summaries and describing her characters rather than revealing their attributes through their actions. In spite of some foreshadowing early on, Flor’s particular superpower comes as a surprise, and the dialogue does not ring true. A barely concealed message about the consequences of bullying is likely to be lost on readers, if they get that far.
Skip. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4169-8042-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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