Bound to whet appetites.
A droll tween take on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
For more than five centuries, the superficially polite Ebenezer Tweezer has resided in an enormous house teeming with riches provided by an attic-dwelling beast. Their arrangement is simple: Ebenezer feeds the beast whatever it requests, and the beast vomits forth anything Ebenezer desires. What began with roast beef sandwiches soon gave way to more…unconventional fare, and the beast has vowed to withhold Ebenezer’s 512th birthday present—an annual anti-aging potion—until it’s served a human child. Following a few false starts, Ebenezer visits the contemptible Miss Fizzlewick’s orphanage and adds Bethany, a churlish girl whose parents perished in a fire, to the beast’s menu. Bethany’s surly, sarcastic antics immediately make Ebenezer’s life less than pleasurable, but the beast refuses to sup upon a scrawny child. Straightforward, third-person narration from Ebenezer’s perspective neither preaches nor condescends, and a tight focus on titular characters makes pages fly by. As Ebenezer grows decrepit and battles a will demented as his own, he finds himself growing involuntarily fond of the girl he’s fattening. Can this unlikely tandem outwit a truly inhuman monster? Meggitt-Phillips’ ability to make readers squeal with delight, squirm in discomfort, and squawk with laughter make classical comparisons inevitable. Though wildly imaginative, the book is also ethnically homogenous, as nearly all characters are coded White.
Bound to whet appetites. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-7889-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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