A pleaser for fans of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) and like New York odysseys.
A jewelry heist, an abrasive new friend and the Big Apple itself carry a young visitor through lingering grief-related issues in this engaging, if thematically crowded outing.
Lexi and her little brother Kevin are spending the summer in New York City with their aunt while their father honeymoons with his new wife. Hardly does Lexi step off the train in bustling Grand Central Station than her purse—holding treasured mementos of her mother, two years dead—is snatched. She overhears a suspicious conversation in the station’s Whispering Gallery about jewels before being whirled off to her aunt’s West Side apartment house to meet the super’s hyper daughter, Kim Ling Levine. Electrified by news that gems destined for an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have disappeared, Lexi shares the aforementioned conversation with Kim Ling. She is only half-unwillingly dragged into an investigation that takes the young sleuths on a tour of Manhattan, from the Met and Central Park to some of Grand Central’s darker corners. Bonk casts and contrasts his sparky characters deftly. He good-humoredly portrays Kim (purple haired, and loud of both mouth and clothing) as a stereotypical New Yorker and Lexi as a quiet brooder who is nonetheless capable of holding up her end of a tumultuous relationship. Her new personal insights and the adventure itself ultimately work to thaw her frozen emotional state. Superfluous flashbacks and an extraneous subplot involving the rehabilitation of a teenage runaway are just distractions on the way to a boisterous happy ending.
A pleaser for fans of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) and like New York odysseys. (Mystery. 11-13)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8027-2349-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Clever as ever—if slow off the mark—and positively laden with tics, quirks, and puns.
When deadly minions of archvillain Ledroptha Curtain escape from prison, the talented young protégés of his twin brother, Nicholas Benedict, reunite for a new round of desperate ploys and ingenious trickery.
Stewart sets the reunion of cerebral Reynie Muldoon Perumal, hypercapable Kate Wetherall, shy scientific genius George “Sticky” Washington, and spectacularly sullen telepath Constance Contraire a few years after the previous episode, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (2009). Providing relief from the quartet’s continual internecine squabbling and self-analysis, he trucks in Tai Li, a grubby, precociously verbal 5-year-old orphan who also happens to be telepathic. (Just to even the playing field a bit, the bad guys get a telepath too.) Series fans will know to be patient in wading through all the angst, arguments, and flurries of significant nose-tapping (occasionally in unison), for when the main action does at long last get under way—the five don’t even set out from Mr. Benedict’s mansion together until more than halfway through—the Society returns to Nomansan Island (get it?), the site of their first mission, for chases, narrow squeaks, hastily revised stratagems, and heroic exploits that culminate in a characteristically byzantine whirl of climactic twists, triumphs, and revelations. Except for brown-skinned George and olive-complected, presumably Asian-descended Tai, the central cast defaults to white; Reynie’s adoptive mother is South Asian.
Clever as ever—if slow off the mark—and positively laden with tics, quirks, and puns. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-45264-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A talky ending leaves a forgiveable blemish on this semisatirical debut tale of a young foundling learning to harness a real superpower while setting out to uncover his obscure past. Years of poring over a stash of tattered comics left at the door of his New Jersey orphanage at least partially ease Jack’s adjustment when he’s suddenly attacked by a heavily armed warrior robot and then hustled off to the Imagine Nation—a floating island entirely populated by superheroes and reachable only by Those Who Believe. Though the Nation is rapidly turning into a police state thanks to a (pointedly familiar) climate of media-fostered fear in the wake of an attempted invasion by the alien race of robo-zombie Rüstov, Jack does gather enough support both to survive the public revelation that his own bloodstream is crawling with Rüstov nanobots and, thanks to his burgeoning ability to understand and make friends with machines, to steel himself for a second battle with the aforementioned metal warrior. Though Myklusch prefers diatribes and explanations to exploring the ins and outs of this comic-book world, he creates a beguiling, sequel-worthy scenario. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9561-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
