by Jennifer A. Nielsen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2021
Fails to stand out.
A 12-year-old Resistance fighter must decode her father’s final message and save him.
Meggie hasn’t seen her British father in two years, ever since the Nazis invaded France and Papa left to fight. She and her French mother have left their home close to the border with Germany and are living with her French grandmother on a farm in a rural part of the Occupied Zone. Meggie discovers Capt. Henry Stewart, an injured Englishman, in her family’s barn, and he gives her a poem that her father wrote. He also asks her to take a family on the run to safety; in exchange, they will reveal the whereabouts of Meggie’s father, a spy on the run. The plot suffers from the ultimate deus ex machina, a backpack Capt. Stewart gives Meggie that contains every item she will ever need—a spy manual, money, blank ration cards, explosives, and a map (covering over 100 kilometers yet still so detailed it shows individual buildings in a Parisian suburb)—which is somehow never lost or searched by the Nazis. Meanwhile, Meggie solves each piece of the coded poem exactly in time to use the specific information revealed. While the premise is an exciting one and the subject matter is an unusual spin on World War II stories, the novel fails to generate sufficient suspense to maintain readers’ interest.
Fails to stand out. (secret codes, historical information) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-62099-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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by Alan Gratz ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2017
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
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In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2013
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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