A lively but confusing superhero adventure.
A teenage superhero investigates a series of bombs planted in his city in this children’s book.
Although mild-mannered teen Michael is frequently late for class, he values school. When he goes out at night to fight crime as Catboy, he makes sure to get home by 10:50 p.m. No narrative exposition is given for how Michael obtained his powers of superhuman smell. But living in “big bad” Las Vegas, he finds that his summer has been full of crime-fighting exploits. As school starts again, a bomb threat and a subsequent series of random explosions ensure his year will be anything but tranquil. Catboy doesn’t act alone. He works with the local police department and his FBI agent father, using his catlike sense of smell to track down a series of clues. Without apparent warning, a voice recording reveals that the Vegas bombs are being planted by an England-based ex–FBI agent who wants to rule the world as queen. Michael’s whole family abruptly travels around the world to stop her: “England is so big and wide,” a character comments. A massive, partially helicopter-based fight with unnamed assailants follows. In this action-packed tale, Tuttle offers an intriguing young superhero with amazing catlike powers. But the author veers unpredictably between first and third person and between present and past tense. In addition, the motivations of the villain and the reasoning behind the bombs in Vegas remain unclear in this short book (under 30 pages). Major plot points receive less space than casual dialogue over breakfast. Though the work appears to target children, there are no illustrations, and the small font size may discourage young readers.
A lively but confusing superhero adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982237-41-7
Page Count: 30
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A feel-good tale of a clever and determined stallion set against a well-developed landscape.
In mid-19th-century Nevada, a colt named Sky grows up to lead his band of wild horses.
Parry’s moving story follows the pattern of her recent animal tales, A Wolf Called Wander (2019) and A Whale of the Wild (2020), chronicling a wild animal’s life in the first person, imagining its point of view, and detailing and appreciating the natural world it inhabits. As Sky grows from wobbly newborn to leader of his family, he faces more than the usual challenges for colts who must fight their stallions or leave their herds when they are grown up. Fagan’s appealing black-and-white illustrations help readers envision this survival story. Sky’s adventures include forced service with the Pony Express; being befriended by an enslaved Paiute boy; escaping to find his now-captured band; and helping them escape the silver miners who’d destroyed their world. Animal lovers will applaud his ingenuity and stubbornness. Although Sky’s band has suffered serious injuries (his mother is blind), he and Storm, a mare who was his childhood companion, lead them toward safety in a new wilderness. The writer’s admiration for these wild horses and her concerns about human destruction of their environment come through even more clearly in a series of concluding expository essays discussing the wild horses, the Indigenous Americans, the natural history of the Great Basin, silver mining, and the Pony Express.
A feel-good tale of a clever and determined stallion set against a well-developed landscape. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780062995957
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A decent start to a silly sci-fi series.
An extraterrestrial teen refugee becomes a Hollywood star.
Citizen Short Nose, a 13-year-old, blue-skinned, six-eyed, bipedal ET, has left his home world in an effort to escape the authoritarian forces that reign there. The teen runaway lands his spacecraft in the middle of Universal Studios and easily blends in among the tourists and actors in movie costumes. Citizen Short Nose quickly changes his name to Buddy C. Burger and befriends Luis Rivera, an 18-year-old Latinx actor who moonlights as Frankenstein on the Universal lot. Inspired to be an actor by his grandmother Wrinkle’s love of Earth culture, Buddy lands a gig on Oddball Academy, playing (of course) an alien from another world. On set, Buddy befriends Cassidy Cambridge, the brown-skinned teen star of the show. Buddy balances keeping his true identity secret (everyone just assumes he’s wearing an alien costume) with becoming an overnight sensation. The book is efficiently written, moving the story forward so quickly that readers won’t have time to think too hard about the bizarre circumstances necessary for the whole thing to work. This series opener’s big problem is the ending: The story just stops. Characters are established and plot mechanics are put together, but the book basically trusts readers to show up for the next installment. Those enamored with Hollywood gags and sci-fi plot boiling will probably be engaged enough to do so.
A decent start to a silly sci-fi series. (Science fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3369-7
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
