National Book Award winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied, 2008) explores the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires in this well-crafted, literary page turner.
Resourceful, frank and observant, with a wry sense of humor, 14-year-old Minnie must take work as a lady's maid for the unscrupulous and ostentatious Sumps, who are moving to San Francisco, when her beloved and restless father gambles away the family's Philadelphia tavern. "I'd rather wash the greasiest pots in the tavern. I'd rather clean the fish," she confides in her diary. Mrs. Chester Sump, her remote, 16-year-old daughter Lily and Minnie arrive in San Francisco on April 17, 1906, just in time for the biggest society event of the season—Enrico Caruso’s appearance in Carmen. At 5:12 the next morning, a massive earthquake tears through the city. The author deftly incorporates true events, circumstances and key historical figures into the rapidly unfolding fictional plot, in which Minnie is thrown into a moral dilemma after she is mistaken for someone else. Blundell achieves an impressive balance, portraying the catastrophic destruction and fight to save the city while imbuing the story with elements of mystery, melodrama and a Mark Twain–like sensibility. As Minnie uncovers truly corrupt and greedy goings-on, perpetrated by characters such as "Slippery Andy," and also witnesses heroic firemen in action, her sense of what it means to live with integrity crystallizes.
Exciting, suspenseful, absorbing and informative. (epilogue, historical note, archival photographs, author's note) (Historical fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-31022-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION
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