A well-wrought cautionary tale that’s fast-moving and full of surprises.
Day’s third novel about a smart but shy New York City boy finds its hero involved with a group of vigilante computer hackers.
Thirteen-year-old Sebastian Kemp is in a bad place. To prove his innocence in a cheating scam, he tried to hack his school’s computer system—and was caught, expelled, and sent to the “110 percent awful” Berkowitz High, full of kids who “bombed out” of other schools. The place isn’t all bad: Sebastian is welcomed by 15-year-old Jazmin, who has a baby daughter, and by Marty, a wannabe actor who enrolled because of the school’s theater program. But he’s terrorized by Sammy the Psycho, a bully who demands that Sebastian help him cheat on a math quiz. Unwilling to do it, Sebastian instead seeks out the Totos—a group of teenage runaways–turned–computer hackers who operate from an abandoned train car beneath Grand Central Terminal. Sebastian learns to hack and hopes to protect himself by digging up dirt on Sammy the Psycho. He finds himself empowered by the Totos’ righteous vigilantism, but is he being drawn into something more nefarious? As the answer emerges, Sebastian is confronted by teen pregnancy and homelessness, police corruption, and the insidious practice of grooming potential victims of abuse. He’s a likable protagonist—young for his age but good-hearted and nonjudgmental—and the other characters evince real personality. Day writes in the first person, present tense, narrating with a prose style that gives easy access to Sebastian’s thoughts and feelings, and the well-paced plot rattles along and avoids predictability. Some readers may quibble with how easily Sebastian becomes a master hacker, but even this fits in with the authorial injunction for readers not to be too readily accepting. Younger readers of this novel will learn, as Sebastian does, that problems rarely have easy solutions—and if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
A well-wrought cautionary tale that’s fast-moving and full of surprises.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9854349-2-7
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Artists Gate Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read...
When a lock-in becomes a reality game, 12-year-old Kyle Keeley and his friends use library resources to find their way out of Alexandriaville’s new public library.
The author of numerous mysteries for children and adults turns his hand to a puzzle adventure with great success. Starting with the premise that billionaire game-maker Luigi Lemoncello has donated a fortune to building a library in a town that went without for 12 years, Grabenstein cleverly uses the tools of board and video games—hints and tricks and escape hatches—to enhance this intricate and suspenseful story. Twelve 12-year-old winners of an essay contest get to be the first to see the new facility and, as a bonus, to play his new escape game. Lemoncello’s gratitude to the library of his childhood extends to providing a helpful holographic image of his 1968 librarian, but his modern version also includes changing video screens, touch-screen computers in the reading desks and an Electronic Learning Center as well as floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretching up three stories. Although the characters, from gamer Kyle to schemer Charles Chiltington, are lightly developed, the benefits of pooling strengths to work together are clear.
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read is a winner for readers and game-players alike. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87089-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
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