Everything but vampires…oh, wait.
Zombies, giant centipedes, and tentacled alien horrors come home to roost in this series closer.
Determined to shove as much ick into their climactic episode as possible, Lang and Bartkowski open with a young character who’s still bleeding from the incision left from cutting giant bugs out of his stomach while he was awake (“Horribly, terribly awake”). While he’s fleeing a crowd of zombies spitting infectious loogies, fellow middle schoolers brave hazards ranging from tentacled trees to giant exploding centipedes in an effort to prevent partly alien creepy crawlies (which the corrupt eco-corporation Green On! is trying to weaponize) from escaping into Connecticut. For readers who delight in tales about intrepid young teens fighting multi-eyed monsters (“Rae’s thumbs sank in deep. She ignored the hot splash of gooey liquid trickling down her hands and arms”) or wrestling with both literal and figurative inner demons in eerie settings amid splashes of blood and ichor and the odd severed limb or cut-off scream, the town of Whispering Pines definitely merits a visit. And, just to show that it was all in fun, one humongous explosion later, nearly all the central cast staggers out alive for fence-mending (“I’m sorry I tried to drink your blood”) and a pizza party.
Everything but vampires…oh, wait. (Horror. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781665921916
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read...
When a lock-in becomes a reality game, 12-year-old Kyle Keeley and his friends use library resources to find their way out of Alexandriaville’s new public library.
The author of numerous mysteries for children and adults turns his hand to a puzzle adventure with great success. Starting with the premise that billionaire game-maker Luigi Lemoncello has donated a fortune to building a library in a town that went without for 12 years, Grabenstein cleverly uses the tools of board and video games—hints and tricks and escape hatches—to enhance this intricate and suspenseful story. Twelve 12-year-old winners of an essay contest get to be the first to see the new facility and, as a bonus, to play his new escape game. Lemoncello’s gratitude to the library of his childhood extends to providing a helpful holographic image of his 1968 librarian, but his modern version also includes changing video screens, touch-screen computers in the reading desks and an Electronic Learning Center as well as floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretching up three stories. Although the characters, from gamer Kyle to schemer Charles Chiltington, are lightly developed, the benefits of pooling strengths to work together are clear.
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read is a winner for readers and game-players alike. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87089-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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