Fresh from an encounter with ghost mastodons (Six Haunted Hairdos, 1997), Miss Earth’s fifth-grade class readily takes on a new challenge in this eccentric holiday story from Maguire. When Mayor Timothy Grass disappears, all of Hamlet, Vermont, is abuzz with rumors; in Miss Earth’s class opinion is about evenly divided between the Tattletales (girls), who think he fell into a time warp, and the Copycats (boys), who blame Bigfoot. Neutral Pearl Hotchkiss’s suggestion that he was abducted by aliens is discounted, but she’s right. Having glimpsed a Christmas movie on the visor screen before their crash landing, five aliens from planet Fixipuddle are out to free the slaves from “Santa Claw’s” workshop and end his evil domination of the world; when Mayor Grass strolls by, still in his Santa suit from a school visit, they tie him up and apply tickle torture to make him reveal the location of his Fortress of Fear (the workshop). After an unsuccessful attempt to disguise themselves as Keebler-style elves, the aliens recruit Lois Kennedy’s beagle, Reebok, to spy for them, equipping him with a universal translator that allows him to talk. Their mistake: Reebok’s a double agent. The Tattletales and Copycats accept Reebok’s story, put aside all rivalries, and spring into action, converting the classroom into a “workshop” of broken toys for the aliens to “liberate.” This clever comedy, with humor both broad and sly, has the odd combination of hilariously fractious aliens and a generous measure of Christmas cheer—but it works. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-83894-0
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
A kid adventurer with a disability makes this steampunk offering stand out.
Orphaned twins, an adventurer dad lost to an ice monster, and an airship race around the world.
In Lontown, 12-year-old twins Arthur and Maudie learn that their explorer father has gone missing on his quest to reach South Polaris, the crew of his sky-ship apparently eaten by monsters. As he’s accused of sabotage, their father’s property is forfeit. The disgraced twins are sent off to live in a garret in a scene straight out of an Edwardian novel à la A Little Princess. Maudie has the consolation of her engineering skills, but all Arthur wants is to be an adventurer like his father. A chance to join Harriet Culpepper’s journey to South Polaris might offer excitement and let him clear his father’s name—if only he can avoid getting eaten by intelligent ice monsters. Though some steampunk set dressing is appropriately over-the-top (such as a flying house, thinly depicted but charming), adaptive tools for Arthur’s disability are wonderfully realistic. His iron arm is a standard, sometimes painful passive prosthesis. The crew adapts the airship galley for Arthur’s needs, even creating a spiked chopping board. Off the ship, Arthur and Maudie meet people and animals in vignettes that are appealingly rendered but slight. Harriet teaches the white twins respect for the cultures they encounter on these travels, though they are never more than observers of non-Lontowners’ different ways.
A kid adventurer with a disability makes this steampunk offering stand out. (Steampunk. 9-11)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00564-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts.
Catfished…by a ghost!
Harry Mancini, an 11-year-old White boy, was born and lives in Harry Houdini’s house in New York City. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s obsessed with Houdini and his escapology. Harry and his best friend, Zeke, are goofing around in some particularly stupid ways (“Because we’re idiots,” Zeke explains later) when Harry hits his head. In the aftermath of a weeklong coma, Harry finds a mysterious gift: an ancient flip phone that has no normal phone service but receives all-caps text messages from someone who identifies himself as “HOUDINI.” Harry is wary of this unseen stranger, like any intelligently skeptical 21st-century kid, but he’s eventually convinced: His phone friend is the real deal. So when Houdini asks Harry to try one of his greatest tricks, Harry agrees. Harry—so full of facts about Houdini that he litters his storytelling with infodumps, making him an enthusiastic tour guide to Houdini’s life—is easily tricked by his supportive-seeming hero. Harry, Zeke, and Houdini are all just the right amount of snarky, and while Harry’s terrifying adventure has an occasionally inconsistent voice, the humor and tension make this an appealing page-turner. Archival photographs of Harry Houdini make the ghostly visitation feel closer. Zeke is Black, and Harry Houdini, as he was in life, is a White Jewish immigrant.
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts. (historical note, bibliography) (Supernatural adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4515-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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