Engaging storytelling with diverse characters and a deft mix of mystery, the supernatural, and real-life, relatable teen...
In this sequel, two bullied middle schoolers continue to display a talent for befriending ghosts, untangling mysteries, and solving murders.
In the first installment of Paavola’s (Jack and the Beanpole, 2019, etc.) series, two smart eighth graders—tall and skinny white girl Breanne Thurman and short Sonny Etherly, who is black—bonded over their abilities to communicate with the dead and their relegation to the cafeteria “nerd table.” Now, not long after solving a murder, assisting a trio of ghosts haunting their school, and learning that they can speak to each other telepathically, the two friends face a double challenge: help five more spirits “cross over” and cope with Breanne’s relentless bully, the leader of the school’s mean girls. The first ghost, Ashni “Firefly” Patel, died a violent death at the school in the 1950s along with sad, frightened first grader Luis Sanchez and sullen Timmy O’Brien, a leather-jacketed teen. At the zoo, Breanne and Sonny meet two more ghosts of ’50s vintage, seemingly unrelated to the first three (or are they?): the zoo’s one-time veterinarian and the lion in his care. This fast-moving tale of suspense and the supernatural, told through the distinctive first-person voices of Sonny, Breanne, and Ashni, is seamlessly grounded in the real-world issue of bullying. Indeed, few characters in the book, living or dead, are (or were) unaffected by bullying, some as bullies themselves. Despite ghostly intercessions on Breanne’s behalf, Paavola doesn’t offer glib solutions. What shines through, without losing the plot’s momentum, are some root causes of bullying and the importance of a proactive school administration, communication, tools for de-escalating anger, and supportive peers and adults. Sonny has his grandmother (Grams) to confide in; Breanne has her grandfather; and they both have a sympathetic science teacher. Diversity is easily organic to the narrative, with characters described as black or white; so are Grams’ frank recollections of segregation in the ’50s, leading Sonny to understand Luis’ and Ashni’s experiences as “two ‘not-white’ kids in an all-white school.”
Engaging storytelling with diverse characters and a deft mix of mystery, the supernatural, and real-life, relatable teen issues.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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