The last thing video game nerds need is a reinforcement of a regressive view of women as objects instead of individuals
A video game fanatic turns his world upside down.
Bryan Biggins is a gamer. The white middle schooler is obsessed with “Sovereign of Darkness,” a computer game with a secret level that constantly eludes him. But one night, Bryan finally gets all the elements lined up properly to enter it, and—poof!—he wakes up the next day living life as if it were a video game. His bike ride to school becomes a “Mario Kart”–esque race for survival. His gym class turns into a “Call of Duty”–like shoot’em-up. And his teachers become sages and dungeon masters. It’s an imaginative premise that undercuts itself. Bryan’s best friend, Latino Oz Guzman, seems mostly to be on hand for comic relief, but he fares better than the object of Bryan’s affection, gorgeous, brown-skinned Jessica Alcorn, who has all the character development of Zelda. The novel appropriately lifts many elements from video games, but a flat female character who’s just a prize for the male hero should have been left on the table. That’s what the book is ultimately about: Bryan has to level up and win Jess’ heart to complete the game, but Jess is barely in the book, which is instead dominated by video game allegories for middle school troubles.
The last thing video game nerds need is a reinforcement of a regressive view of women as objects instead of individuals . (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4704-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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