Indiana Jones meets Mad Max in a whirlwind as exciting for teens as it is for middle-grade readers.
Young archaeologists Clem and her android brother enter a dangerous race to find priceless artifacts.
Fourteen-year-old Clementine Hetherington wants desperately to break into the archaeology field. Not only because she is struggling to find food for herself and “spark” for her android younger brother, Digory, but also to continue their family’s legacy after the mysterious deaths of both their parents. When the academy proves unwilling to admit Clem and Dig because they are too young, the siblings are left with frighteningly few options until a nefarious ex-friend, Alistair Kilburn, tells them about the Ironwood Race. Combining desert motor racing and archaeological excavation, the Ironwood is a multi-leg race to find four priceless artifacts, which will go to the victorious team, but for Clem and Dig it also means unearthing treachery as well as treasures. Breach and Holgate have delivered an impossibly energetic graphic novel with action that leaves many a panel in a cloud of dust. A tight narrative arc allows the pacing to shift intensity in all the right places, although it also means many things are left unexplored, such as characters’ racial backgrounds (Clem is brown-skinned), Digory’s sentience, or the Earth-like but ET–populated and futuristic setting. Archaeology purists may balk a bit, but fun and peril outshine inaccuracies here. The older protagonist and teen-oriented emotional turmoil are balanced by the delightful, adrenaline-charged incongruity of high-stakes excavation and absolutely-no-rules racing for a fairly broad audience.
Indiana Jones meets Mad Max in a whirlwind as exciting for teens as it is for middle-grade readers. (Graphic science fiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-81445-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Do these loose ends portend a sequel? More troublemaking and bigotry? Perhaps Sandford will take up yoga. Now that might...
Soccer (aka, to most of the world, football) at its apex is a beautiful game, but despite its title, in Quinn’s story readers get a lot more dirty play, errant behavior, and hooliganism.
In this graphic novel, a down-at-the-heels British town has little going for it but its soccer teams, the storied Sandford Town football club and the current champs, the Sandford Rovers. Readers are thrust into the Town camp, but except for the flawed heroes—twin brothers, their parents, and, part of the time, their sister—none of the characters (mostly white) are appealing. Although the town looks like Coventry after the blitz, Sharma has chosen to draw all the lads (players) as descendants of Thor—lantern jaws, gritted teeth, clenched fists, great mops of unruly hair—while the other characters (fans, reporters) resemble particularly brutal, sunken-eyed prison guards. Along with some crumbs thrown in for those who thought this was a sports story (“Sandford Town is more than just a football club. It’s a family. A dream. A way of life. And that way of life is in danger,” barks the coach—and he’s the nice one), there is plenty of mayhem: “You lot must be mental coming this side of the river,” says one black gentleman to another black gentlemen—and black gentlemen nearly monopolize the hooliganism, anger issues, and criminality. In the end, a boy-toy band saves the day, but not without some loose ends.
Do these loose ends portend a sequel? More troublemaking and bigotry? Perhaps Sandford will take up yoga. Now that might spark some inspired storytelling. (Graphic fiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-93-81182-11-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unflinching, delicate portrait of a boy and his broken family.
As his family falls apart, a young teen boy struggles to approach the girl he admires from afar.
Happy family memories recede into the past for Louis. His alcoholic father wallows in self-pity, holed up in the old family home; his mother, meanwhile, is unable to move beyond the weight of her worries. Thankfully, Louis’ younger brother, Truffle, remains a jolly light in Louis’ life. Spotting unmarked “ghost cop cars” on the highway with his friend Boris also helps Louis forget about his family’s troubles. But school brings more problems for Louis, who hasn’t yet worked up the nerve to talk to Billie, a girl whose words explode the world “in clusters of honey and fire.” With his parents in mind, he hesitates to say hello for a reason: “What I did know was that, for the most part, love ends badly.” Though laced with heartbreak and fragile hope, Louis’ narrative glows with quiet wit and compassion thanks to Britt’s careful, nuanced, and true-to-life examination of familial relationships. Arsenault’s expressive pencil-and-ink drawings render the story in simple lines and drab smears with occasional bursts of color, primarily yellow and light blue. Hopeful episodes—Louis nursing a baby raccoon back to health, Louis’ father rallying to free himself from alcoholism’s grip on an ill-fated family vacation—inevitably end in something less than ideal, but it all fades away, if momentarily, when Louis finds his voice in the face of love. (A white default is assumed.)
An unflinching, delicate portrait of a boy and his broken family. (Graphic novel. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-859-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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