Full STEAM ahead on a series debut equally charged with personal issues and science in (dramatic) action.
The Genius Academy turns out to be about more than dull classwork, as a lonely young inventor discovers.
Unable, despite her mother’s earnest pleas, to stop concocting devices like the death ray that blows a hole through the floor, Nikola reluctantly agrees to be shipped off to a (supposed) boarding school for geniuses. Hardly has she arrived, though, than the death ray is stolen and Nikki discovers that she and her six classmates are actually a team of secret agents employed to save the world on a regular basis. Fortunately, the young folk are an unusually talented bunch. Unfortunately, Nikki has a lot to learn about teamwork, trust, and friendship before the trail of clues dropped by the thief leads to a tense and twisty climax. Cleverly modeling her preteen cast on a gallery of historical geniuses, Keating has done her homework: Nikki reflects her near namesake not only in her work on electrical inventions, but also in other respects from eidetic memory to deep-seated distrust of others. Likewise, her associates include sharply observant Mary Shelley, musical and math prodigy Adam “Mo” Mozart, biology whiz Charlotte Darwin, and multiskilled Leo da Vinci. The white default is in place, but the kids’ adult overseer has dark skin, and in Marlin’s illustrations so do Mo and charismatic team leader Grace O’Malley.
Full STEAM ahead on a series debut equally charged with personal issues and science in (dramatic) action. (author’s note) (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-29521-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
An absorbing adventure that wears its twin informational and character-development loads lightly.
A young Parisian joins the French Resistance in this Boys of Wartime series entry.
Motivated equally by patriotism, hatred for the occupying boches and a desire to win the esteem of his absent father, Michael joins a friend in distributing taunting leaflets. His involvement in Resistance activities soon escalates into helping captured British and American airmen make their way to Spain. At first he acts only as a courier of forged identity documents, but later he helps first to slip a Jewish neighbor’s child out of the city, then hides an ailing American fugitive in his family’s apartment before accompanying him south over the Pyrenees. Meanwhile, he serves as a witness to the anxieties and physical hardships of wartime life under the Nazis, while seeing friends, neighbors and his own older brother taken away and ultimately earning sufficient self-esteem to lose his dependence on his father’s regard. Calkoven’s characters are simplified types, but she crafts an action-oriented plot that is suspenseful without being explicitly violent and is also well stocked with carefully researched details. A timeline and multiple notes at the end provide quick overviews of the tale’s historical background and the war’s overall course.
An absorbing adventure that wears its twin informational and character-development loads lightly. (map, glossary, reading list) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3724-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
This mess falls flat even if read as a sendup.
A promising premise—mad scientist recruits children to steal treasures from humanity’s past—isn’t enough to carry a contrivance-ridden plot, poor characterization and a near-total lack of internal logic.
Dispatched by a cruel, vicious quantum physicist named “Uncle,” Caleb spends his days traveling to past eras to fetch collectibles, from an ancient Chinese vase to the first Frisbee, for sale to nebulous clients in the 2060s. Ungar never bothers to explain such details as why such thefts don’t radically change the past or where the copies of artifacts that Caleb and his fellow thieves leave in place of the originals come from. He also casts his protagonist as Uncle’s most successful agent but has him either fail completely or require significant help from allies every time. The author also abandons a set time limit on trips to the past and other internal rules when convenient, adds magical elements such as a pill that wipes only memories necessary to the plot and, for romance, forcibly hooks up his rude, sullen, naïve, inarticulate, jealous and often unwashed teen with Abbie, a beautiful, smarter and far more competent young agent.
This mess falls flat even if read as a sendup. (Science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: March 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25485-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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