A series opener that melds Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club with ironic glue.
Babysitting is Kelly’s worst nightmare.
Needing funds for summer camp, the white 13-year-old grudgingly takes a babysitting job. When her charge is kidnapped by leather-taloned beasties, Kelly discovers that the Boogeyman is actually real. Next thing she knows, Kelly is fighting monsters alongside a secret babysitting society, members of which are a moped-driving teen who looks like she stepped out of an apocalyptic future and three of Kelly’s classmates; all are white save African-American Berna, whose hair is “wild [and] puffy.” The stakes are high now, as it seems the stolen white 5-year-old has the power to dream dreams into reality, and the Boogeyman wants him in order to fill the world with living nightmares. Kelly, who has never been popular, discovers she’s got some really surprising attributes, which increase her chances with her longtime crush, Victor from Guatemala (who’s both exoticized and largely off the page). While the story never gets all that frightening, it has its moments, as in the titular guide’s catalog of monsters, which includes the ghost of a woman eaten by her own cats. Grand Guignol, aka the Boogeyman, has a flair for the theatrical, and his snarky complaint exemplifies much of the dialogue: “I get called names like ‘creepy evil, twitchy goat legs’ or ‘that scary man who keeps trying to eat me.’ ”
A series opener that melds Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club with ironic glue. (Adventure. 8-13)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243783-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Charming characters help compensate for a choppy plotline.
A clever young witch yearns to belong in a world of good and evil.
Ten-year-old witch Ava Heartstraw plans to use her magic to help her family of poor brick-moss farmers living at the edge of the Impassable Desert. In order to become a full-fledged witch, Ava, who has “sand-colored skin and wavy brown hair,” will need to study at West Oz Witch Academy with other magical youths. But when Ava fails the magic demonstration to confirm her enrollment at WOW Academy, she’s deemed wicked and sent to the School for Wicked Witches instead. In reality, this school turns out not to be as terrifying as Ava expected. Nevertheless, she wants to do what it takes to escape, rectify this error, and reclaim her rightful place at WOW Academy. In the process, Ava navigates evolving friendships, bullies, and her newfound, powerful water witch magic. In this series opener inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Oz series, Ava embarks on an odyssey not unlike that of Dorothy. A colorful cast of quirky characters appear, often at unexpected times, leaving many loose ends that may be addressed in future installments. The pacing feels unbalanced, and the story concludes rather abruptly with a cliffhanger ending. The characters are fantasy-world diverse and have a variety of skin tones and hair colors.
Charming characters help compensate for a choppy plotline. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781339042671
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Thrills and chills in a gloriously goofy setting.
It’s Halloween every day in the town of Samhain—and not all the creepy residents are in costume.
Playing with expectations in her fiction debut, Virnig transplants sixth grader Caleb Fisher and his recently widowed mom from Los Angeles to a Wisconsin town where, to crank up the tourism, residents and buildings are dressed up for Halloween all year round. But, as Caleb quickly discovers, some of the local vampires and witches are very convincing. Could they be real? The evidence remains ambiguous (at least until the climactic hullaballoo), but Caleb has help from enthusiastic classmate Tai Thompson, who’s described as standing out from her “un-diverse” peers for being not only unusually small in stature and dressed as a fairy, but for having Asian and Caribbean heritage. Together they collect clues, dig into the town’s tragic history, and, ultimately, expose a terrifying truth. The suspense and the amusingly eerie setting make effective hooks. So do both the developing friendship and an impulsive young protagonist whose emotional vulnerability in the wake of devastating family loss and sudden uprooting masks a streak of ingenuity that comes out not only in the clutch but all along in the inventive costumes he wears to school instead of the blandly conventional ones everyone else adopts. A twist at the suspiciously tidy tail end offers plenty of enticing potential for sequels.
Thrills and chills in a gloriously goofy setting. (Light horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781665946575
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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