Readers will eagerly await this spunky, saucy new amateur detective’s next caper.
In Book 1 of The Mysteries of Maisie Hitchins, a perceptive London girl with a penchant for detecting tackles her first case to save a friend who’s been wrongly accused of stealing sixpence.
Maisie longs to become a famous detective like her hero, Gilbert Carrington. Unfortunately, 12-year-old Maisie lives in her Gran’s boardinghouse, where sleuthing opportunities are limited. After Maisie rescues a puppy someone’s tried to drown, she’s determined to find the culprit. Meanwhile, her new canine pal, Eddie, creates havoc when he absconds with sausages from the butcher’s delivery boy, George. Soon after, Maisie learns George has been sacked for stealing sixpence from the butcher’s shop, even though he tells her he found the coin. Armed with notebook and pencil, Maisie cases out the butcher’s shop, interviews suspects and goes undercover disguised as a boy and an old lady. While working on George’s case, Maisie accidentally discovers who tried to drown Eddie, and after several hilarious escapades and help from Gran’s eccentric boarders, she cracks both cases. Linear, black-and-white illustrations teem with what appears to be late-19th-century period detail, while Maisie and other characters are rendered with whimsy and charm.
Readers will eagerly await this spunky, saucy new amateur detective’s next caper. (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-33928-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl...
The closing of her favorite swimming pool opens 11-year-old Gloriana Hemphill’s eyes to the ugliness of racism in a small Mississippi town in 1964.
Glory can’t believe it… the Hanging Moss Community Pool is closing right before her July Fourth birthday. Not only that, she finds out the closure’s not for the claimed repairs needed, but so Negroes can’t swim there. Tensions have been building since “Freedom Workers” from the North started shaking up status quo, and Glory finds herself embroiled in it when her new, white friend from Ohio boldly drinks from the “Colored Only” fountain. The Hemphills’ African-American maid, Emma, a mother figure to Glory and her sister Jesslyn, tells her, “Don’t be worrying about what you can’t fix, Glory honey.” But Glory does, becoming an activist herself when she writes an indignant letter to the newspaper likening “hateful prejudice” to “dog doo” that makes her preacher papa proud. When she’s not saving the world, reading Nancy Drew or eating Dreamsicles, Glory shares the heartache of being the kid sister of a preoccupied teenager, friendship gone awry and the terrible cost of blabbing people’s secrets… mostly in a humorously sassy first-person voice.
Though occasionally heavy-handed, this debut offers a vivid glimpse of the 1960s South through the eyes of a spirited girl who takes a stand. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-33180-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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