by Glenda Millard ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2010
Eleven-year-old Skip, a budding artist, is a runaway from a violent foster home. His only friend, Billy, is a homeless man who tries to keep Skip at arm’s length. As brutal as Skip’s life on the streets can be, it’s worse still when bombs fall, devastating the city. War has come, and the daily lonely terror of homelessness has been supplanted by total chaos. Oddly, though, Skip is almost happy. He and Billy find Max, a six-year-old boy, in the ruined shell of the city library, and suddenly Skip has the closest thing he’s ever had to a family. They set up housekeeping in an abandoned amusement park, where they are joined by a troubled teenage mother and her infant. Between dodging looters and soldiers, the newly formed family finds time for music and make-believe (with an unfortunate recurring theme of playing Indian). Alas, no amount of grit and determination will erase the bombs from the sky or the soldiers from the countryside. This philosophical, appealing survival tale is simultaneously grim and hopeful. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2264-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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by Pete Hautman & Mary Logue ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2007
After their successful sleuthing in Snatched (2006), Brian Bain and Roni Delicata are ready to solve more mysteries in their little town of Bloodwater. Fred Bloodwater, a real-estate developer, is planning on building condominiums on Indian Bluff, but Brian and Roni believe a local professor’s assertion that there are important Native American remains in caves on the bluff. When the professor is beaten and left unconscious, the intrepid detectives are on the case. Who was responsible for the assault? The professor’s ex-fiancée? Fred Bloodwater’s cute (but stupid) teenage son? A skunk-cabbage-obsessed botanist? Moreover, Brian is sure he has seen the Native American remains, in the form of a now-missing skull the professor called “Yorick.” This occasionally uneasy merger of realism and a more over-the-top Scooby Doo/Indiana Jones–style adventure can be jarring. Nevertheless, the adventures of these meddlesome junior sleuths, with the mystery’s tension cut by gentle humor, are quite entertaining. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-24378-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Sleuth/Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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by Jennifer Anne Kogler ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 17, 2008
Twelve-year-old Fern has always been unusual, but when she accidentally teleports out of an unpleasant classroom, she discovers she is an Unusual. Fern’s extreme sun allergy, pointy canines and dark hair are all normal for a vampire—or Otherworldly, as she learns the magical beings like to be called. Though Fern has grown up in an extremely ordinary adoptive human family, she’s anything but run-of-the-mill herself. Fern is one of the Unusual Eleven, a group of Otherworldly children with special abilities and important destinies. Fern and her beloved (and human) foster brother Sam are soon embroiled in a political battle against Vlad, leader of the evil Otherworldlies. Fern and Sam take the magical underworld of the Otherworldlies, composed of an unexpectedly bland bureaucracy informed by classical and European mythology, by storm. Despite plot threads that don’t quite hang together and some awkward turns of phrase, Fern’s story will readily please young vampire fans. (Fantasy. 10-11)
Pub Date: June 17, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-073959-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
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