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
Vibrant visuals will draw kids into a story with an optimistic message about standing up to injustice.
When fires hit right in the middle of the monarch migration, a butterfly named Sokar flees to the city to find help for her family.
After a dramatic opening in which Sokar’s father is killed, the book shifts gears to the Lowriders in Space garage, where we see Lupe Impala, Elirio Malaria, and El Chavo Flapjack Octopus del Mar Junior. In town to get El Chavo glasses, the Lowriders meet Sokar and offer to help her. Readers learn how climate change and pollution are impacting the environment, leading to wildfires, and that much of it is due to the influence of big business taking over the neighborhood. Lupe, Elirio, and El Chavo have their eyes opened by Sokar and come up with a plan to save the neighborhood and the monarchs. Though the message is a good one, at times it feels heavy-handed. However, the inspired art will entice readers. The black-ink outlines pop against a warm palette of reds and oranges, and the illustrations have a vintage comic book vibe. The Lowriders are Latinx, while Sokar and her family are Arab and Muslim (Sokar, who resembles a human with wings, wears a hijab), and at one point the new friends discuss similarities between Arabic and Spanish.
Vibrant visuals will draw kids into a story with an optimistic message about standing up to injustice. (glossary of Spanish and Arabic words, author’s note) (Graphic novel. 10-14)Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7948-3
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Insensitive language isn’t the only rough spot, but younger fans of action manga may be entertained.
A young lad who can turn his hands into huge hammers wishes himself into the storybook that swallowed his father.
In episodic chapters that each start off in color then switch to line drawings, spiky-haired Stud Hammer discovers that his newly discovered superpower doesn’t make him any friends in his village but proves useful both in pounding monsters in his world and, after he’s sucked into watery Ocean City, hooking up with stern young Detective Dan and his big sister, ocean police commissioner Diane, to battle a supertough hammerhead shark political activist. Catering to readers who delight in continual slugfests with massive sound effects, the art is stuffed into cramped panels of wild (if hard to follow) action, and the plot jerks along from one set piece to the next, cutting off abruptly in a brief lull between battles. The special abilities displayed by Stud and several others are judgmentally characterized as “abnormal” in the equally patchy dialogue—when it’s not devolving into variations on “What the crap!!!” or weak banter in which “chubby” or “Mr. Chubs” are repeatedly used to insult Dan. Dan, Diane, and some associates are dark-skinned merfolk kitted out with tails and legs. Stud and other human Swirls, as those humans with magical mutations are called, are occasionally given a light toning, but in the monochrome scenes are generally left as unfilled figures.
Insensitive language isn’t the only rough spot, but younger fans of action manga may be entertained. (Adventure comic. 10-13)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7603-7683-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
