A suspenseful, page-turning new episode in a lively paranormal mystery series.
Two eighth graders use supernatural powers to investigate why teens are disappearing through a school library window, among other mysteries, in this third middle-grade series installment.
Paavola, whose most recent novel is Call Me Firefly (2019), spins another paranormal adventure featuring Sonny Etherly, an African American youth who’s being raised by his grandmother, and his friend Breanne Thurman, who’s white. Both kids are fascinated by science, including esoteric ideas involving string theory and the concept of alternative worlds. Sonny and Breanne also have the ability to read each other’s minds and communicate with ghosts. A mystery is afoot when Sonny spies the number “202” written on a transom window in the school library. The kids soon encounter the ghost of Lorene Turner, a former school librarian, who last saw her brilliant teenage grandson, Bennett, when he disappeared through that very window 16 years before. Then Sonny and Breanne discover that he’s not the only person to have vanished in the same manner. In clear prose and short chapters with lots of cliffhangers, Paavola deftly integrates the supernatural (including the ghost of a Boston bulldog named Con) with more mundane mystery elements. Sonny and Breanne emerge as an entertaining team whose powers don’t distract from their real-life concerns. Breanne, for instance, has an especially close relationship with her grandfather, a retired police officer who’s still trying to crack a cold case involving the murder of a Vietnamese bank manager. Sonny, meanwhile, relies on his grandmother to help him deal with the death of his mom, who served in the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan, and his feelings about his father, a U.S. Marine who’s still stationed there. At one crucial moment, Sonny even hears his grandmother’s advice in his head, urging him to be like his father: “Don’t let fear stop you. Figure a way out.”
A suspenseful, page-turning new episode in a lively paranormal mystery series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and...
Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
After fighting the evil Blouts in The Otherworldlies (2008), Fern must now face a deadlier menace: rooming with the school's...
Twelve-year-old Fern is an Otherworldly, a vampire—though why a non–blood-drinking, non-immortal, naturally born, teleporting telekinetic is called a “vampire” is left as an exercise to the reader.
After fighting the evil Blouts in The Otherworldlies (2008), Fern must now face a deadlier menace: rooming with the school's mean girls on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Fern's only distraction from the bullies tormenting her is her vision of a boy in a cage. The boy, she discovers, is Miles Zapo, a kidnapped Otherworldly just Fern's age. Fern suspects Miles, like her, is one of the Unusuals, destined to do something or other. (It's not clear what’s so Unusual, and it doesn't really matter; as long as there's a prophecy it's important, right?) The kidnapper is the dastardly Silver Tooth, also known as Haryle (“Hair-uh-Lee”) Laffar, brother of evil Vlad from Fern's previous adventure, and possessed of even more mysterious and evil secrets. The Smithsonian, the Hope diamond, moon rocks and mohawked, scaled, monstrous birds all play a part in Haryle's villainous plans for Miles and Fern. A firmly middle-school adventure (despite packaging attempting to capitalize on the paranormal craze among older teens) composed of cartoon villains, unconvincing heroes and a muddled, nonsensical plot.Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199443-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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