An underground adventure that takes too long to get going.
Two brothers discover a subterranean complex full of puzzles, riddles—and maybe their destiny—in Ellis’ debut middle-grade novel.
It’s June, and 12-year-old Peter Wilson and his 10-year-old brother, Dave, are looking forward to another summer in a forest that borders their backyard. They can’t resist exploring an unusually deep hole and are awed to find themselves in a huge underground room with candle-lined walls and an oversized table and chairs. That night, Peter dreams of the room: a man is sitting at the table, 7 feet tall and “radiating…gentleness and kindness.” The giant speaks a single sentence before Peter wakes up: “The secret is important, but your promise is everything.” Guided by dreams and their own ingenuity, the boys work together to explore the caverns, learning that different combinations of lit and unlit candles open doors to different rooms. Eventually, the man from their dreams reveals himself as Eli, “part of a long line of guardians of the earth” charged by God to “reestablish forest areas, cure plant diseases, and correct other imbalances.” Eli and his fellow caretakers invite the boys to become part of their brotherhood, praising them for being “loving, trustworthy, responsible, and capable of carrying out special tasks.” But there’s a catch: they can never tell anyone. The book’s themes of friendship, responsibility, and curiosity are worthwhile, and the boys’ old-fashioned, outdoorsy childhood is anachronistic (the boys use a two-way radio to keep in touch with their parents rather than a cellphone) but pleasantly nostalgic. Occasional illustrations by Winburn (The Five Colors of Our Nature Walk, 2016, etc.) are a nice touch. But the novel’s biggest weakness is simply that the boys don’t meet Eli in the flesh until late in the book. Far too much of the preceding narrative is taken up by descriptions of cautious rock climbing and solving the candle combinations—both more interesting to do than read about. Besides the boys’ mother, who has no name, only two female characters appear, in single scenes completely unnecessary to the narrative; the ancient, holy guardians are all men.
An underground adventure that takes too long to get going.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5427-7
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
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