The author of Coram Boy (2001) again tells several affecting tales at once—but here they’re all weighed down by a baroque literary artifice and a gooey, simplistic ending. Cocooned in total luxury thanks to her genial, fabulously wealthy father, 12-year-old Antonietta is impelled to take her first hesitant steps toward independence by the sudden disappearance of her beloved tutor Miss Kovachev and the appearance of Benny, a guard’s son, who flits about playing minor pranks when he’s not hacking the household computer systems. Miss Kovachev leaves behind a journal which, though written in Bulgarian, evidently begins translating itself in Nettie’s dreams to present a harrowing account of a clandestine trade in Eastern European girls smuggled into England as short-lived sweatshop labor. It’s all true, as Nettie discovers later on, and—gasp—her father is involved. When the police finally arrive her father makes a clean escape, her trophy mom retires to another estate and Nettie, joyously reunited with Miss Kovachev, goes off to try for a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School. It’s a muddle, with good parts but no center. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-374-36333-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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