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The Curse of the Crystal Kuatzin

Name: The Curse of the Crystal Kuatzin
Author: Jan H. Landsberg
ISBN: 978-1482635140

by Jan H. Landsberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 12, 2013

A fine long-lost treasure story featuring equal amounts of adventure and exhilaration.

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A British man goes on a quest to stop a family curse and a worldwide plague in Landsberg’s debut adventure novel.

Jason is given a 125-year-old letter from his great-great-great-grandfather that implores his family to take a treasure, stashed in his own house, back to Brazil to halt a longtime curse. Along the way, Jason, his parents, Terry and Alison, and his sister, Lexy, discover what may be a cure for a lethal disease, caused by Amazonian macaws, which has recently hit America. The novel has a leisurely pace, but its slow tempo often works well, as much of the story is a mystery: Jason realizes that the trunk of treasures, sealed in 1879, contains materials dating from 1900 and later, and Alison slowly translates glyphs on parchment sheets. The story also incorporates touches of fantasy, particularly the titular relic, a statue so powerful that the family is warned not to stare at it. Naturally, they eventually witness its power when they finally make it to the Brazilian rain forest, along with bird disease specialist Dr. Hilary Fitzgerald. The author focuses more on teenagers Jason and Lexy than on their parents, and they are both admirable characters, although Jason can be a bit inconsistent; his remarkable intelligence, aptly displayed in his research on obscure birds, is jarringly offset by his immaturity (“Isn’t this cool, Mum?”). However, Roly, a young thief and con artist who finds a scrapbook about the treasure and tracks down the family, steals the story; although the author establishes him as an antagonist trying to blackmail the Hirleys, his cockney lilt, presented phonetically (“It’s always somefink, innit?”) gives him more than a little charm, particularly as he solidifies a potential romance with Lexy.

A fine long-lost treasure story featuring equal amounts of adventure and exhilaration.

Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2013

ISBN: 978-1482635140

Page Count: 428

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

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GOING SOLO

by Roald Dahl illustrated by Quentin Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1986

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A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986

ISBN: 0142413836

Page Count: 209

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
QUENTIN BLAKE'S FANTASTIC JOURNEYS
by Quentin Blake ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
<i>MONA LISA</i> AND THE OTHERS
by Alice Harman ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

- BOOK REVIEW
ROALD DAHL SHAPES
developed by Roald Dahl ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

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MONSTER

by Walter Dean Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1999

The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...

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In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.

Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.

The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)