Brisk, bookish good fun for puzzle and code lovers.
Riddles in an online book-finding game put young cipher sleuths Emily and James on the trail of both buried treasure and a vengeful arsonist.
Amid a welter of clues, codes, mysterious fires, literary references, glimpses of San Francisco sites and history, and developing relationships carried over from the 2015 opener, the tale takes a suspenseful course. It builds increasingly following Emily’s discovery that her social sciences teacher, Mr. Quisling, is receiving coded clues to copies of Tom Sawyer that have been hidden around the city. The seeming game takes a sinister turn when someone (introduced to readers as “the Phoenix” in ominous interludes) torches the bookstore in which Emily loves to hang out, nearly killing her—and then an exhilarating one when Emily, who is white, and her Chinese-American best friend, James, decipher a message in a supposedly unbreakable code on a document that once belonged to Mark Twain. Bertman surrounds Emily with a supporting cast that is diverse in age and personality if not so much in race, and though the arsonist is summarily hustled off after a tidy confession, the multistranded plot does wind up to a climactic conflagration, the excavation of a glittering 19th-century trove, and broad hints of sequels to come.
Brisk, bookish good fun for puzzle and code lovers. (historical afterword) (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-116-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A snappy mystery that’s full of heart.
A group of bright friends tackles the puzzle of their lives.
Elmwood, New Hampshire, 11-year-old Gina Sparks is small in stature but big on reporting ongoing dramas for the local newspaper with support from her journalist mom. When an unbelievable scoop comes her way, Gina must rely on her tightknit crew of sixth grade best friends whose initials happen to spell GEEK, a label they choose to proudly reclaim. She and science-minded prankster Elena Hernández, theater kid Edgar Feingarten, and driven math genius Kevin Robinson decide to get to the bottom of things when they learn that the Van Houten Toy & Game Company heir made elaborate plans to leave everything to the town of Elmwood before her death—but only if a member of the community could solve an intricate multistep puzzle. Gina hopes that deciphering the clues and finding the missing fortune will be just the thing to revitalize the down-on-its-luck town and bring the Elmwood Tribune back into the black, saving her mom’s job and Gina’s passion project. The GEEKs work together, using their individual talents and deductive reasoning skills to unravel the mystery. Infused with media literacy pointers, such as the difference between fact and opinion and reminders to avoid bias when reporting, the story encourages readers to think critically. Gina and Edgar read as White; Elena is cued as Latinx, and Kevin is implied Black.
A snappy mystery that’s full of heart. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37793-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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