A mystery at the museum is the perfect case for an aspiring fourth-grade detective. Early one morning before school, Alec gets to go with his father, Officer Flint, to the American History Museum, where somebody has made off with the entire cache of gold coins in the Christopher Columbus exhibit. Curator Dr. Glumsfeld gives Alec an uneasy feeling, but this doesn’t prevent him from trying to crack the case. His neighbor, Emily Berg, has no interest in detection, but the new girl at school, Gina Rossi, shares Alec’s passion for puzzles, and becomes his sidekick. The pair even begins passing coded messages, a puzzle-solving bonus for the reader (with solutions at the back of the book). Santopolo’s prose crackles, and she manages to weave in a fair degree of historical information on Columbus as she spins her yarn (and supplements it with a lengthy Author’s Note). The first in what promises to be a solid middle-grade series in the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-439-90352-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More knightly shenanigans, tongue deeply in cheek.
Knights-in-training Tim and Belinda undertake a terrifying sea voyage to fetch a golden fleece and a few other treasures.
Mostly what’s terrifying is that they have Sir Fass, Sir Render, and the rest of the Kingdom of Merryland’s inept, aptly named, and, as it turns out, treacherous Knight Brigade as shipmates…though surviving such nautical hazards as sirens, not to mention Scylla and Charybdis, are (not unlike a monstrous bargleboar, whose allergy to paprika leaves everyone covered in snot) nothing to sneeze at. Cribbing blithely from ancient sources but working in some inventive twists of his own—the song of the sirens, for instance, is so awful that rather than luring sailors to their deaths, it results in them wrecking their ships to avoid hearing it—Gibbs steers his young adventurers from one near disaster to the next before doing readers the disservice of leaving the pair hurtling toward certain death on the last page. As in previous outings, Curtis adds comical line drawings of knights in armor grimacing or looking confused to nearly every spread, and the author pauses the action periodically to define relevant vocabulary building words like overcompensating, nauseous, and (irritatingly) cliffhanger. Most of the cast presents White in the interior art, though Belinda appears to be Black.
More knightly shenanigans, tongue deeply in cheek. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781665917445
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enticing taste of a rich historical world.
A servant boy attempts to win his freedom by repeatedly saving his master as they travel the Silk Road.
At roughly age 12, Omar has led a hard life, having lost both his parents and the woman who cared for him after their deaths and now being chased away by the monks who once housed him for asking too many questions. For the price of six bolts of silk, they hand him off to Samir, a fellow Sogdian who calls himself the Seller of Dreams. Renamed Monkey, he is tasked with assisting Samir in trading. As the two head west with a large caravan across the Taklamakan Desert toward present-day Tajikistan, Monkey learns Samir’s business tricks, though he often disapproves. He also meets blacksmith’s assistant Mara, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Soon, though, it becomes clear that Samir faces more problems than just making the next deal: He has wronged more than one person along the road, and assassins are after him. What follows is Monkey’s account of Samir’s brushes with death—and how Monkey himself may have contributed to Samir’s eventual demise. Filled with the multicultural hustle and bustle of the Silk Road, enlivened by the unpredictable nature of unreliable storytellers, and adorned with whimsical, colorful illustrations, this is a strange, wondrous, and creative tale. Can family be found along the Silk Road, or will everyone ultimately betray you?
An enticing taste of a rich historical world. (author’s note, bibliography) (Adventure. 9-12)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64614-303-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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