People who can commune with animals populate this urban fantasy for middle-grade readers.
Homeless 13-year-old Caw lives with his three loyal crows in a city called Blackstone. A recurring dream torments him: Caw’s parents fling him out of his bedroom window into the air, where he’s caught by crows and carried to safety. Eight years after this expulsion, Caw still doesn’t understand, but a new element to the dream—an evil man with a spider ring—offers a clue. While searching for answers with his new human friend, Lydia, Caw meets a homeless man called Crumb, who informs Caw that the boy is a feral, like him: a person who can talk to and control a certain type of animal. Through Crumb and other ferals, Caw learns that the man from his dreams, the Spinning Man, is determined to return from the Land of the Dead and needs Caw as well as a band of renegade ferals to do so. It’s pushing credulity that the Spinning Man’s minions are as thoroughly inept as they turn out to be, and while the dangers Caw faces—and his responses to their outcomes—are believable, his ability to learn new skills (literally overnight) and succeed against those with many more years of experience may confound readers.
This series opener is definitely not for arachnophobes or those easily frightened, but stouthearted readers happy to suspend their disbelief may enjoy the urban setting and fast-paced plot. (Fantasy. 9-14)Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-232103-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
15
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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