A gripping story about family, war, mourning, and resilience told with emotion and heart.
A South Korean boy longs to rescue his father imprisoned in North Korea.
It’s 1952, and 16-year-old Myung-gi has joined the South Korean army in hopes of finding Ahpa, who was taken by North Korean soldiers two years prior. He’s trapped in a tunnel at the North-South Korean border, and as he waits for what seems like inevitable death, flashbacks transport him to the events that led to this moment. He recalls his family’s joy when Korea was liberated from Japanese imperial rule in 1945—and their despair as American and Soviet troops moved in and divided up the peninsula. His family ended up on the communist side. Myung-gi’s father smuggled in Western books for him to read and committed other quiet acts of resistance before he was taken. His mother reminds him and his younger sister of his father’s wish should he be arrested: They must undertake the dangerous journey hundreds of miles south to Busan, South Korea, and await him there. The family encounters numerous horrors along the way. Myung-gi’s PTSD—in which nothing feels real and all that is familiar is rendered strange—rings entirely true, as does his prolonged grief over losing his father. Nuanced details about the immediate aftermath of World War II in northern Korea, with fraying political alliances, growing tensions among formerly friendly neighbors, and welcome pockets of ordinary life, shed much-needed light on this time in history.
A gripping story about family, war, mourning, and resilience told with emotion and heart. (Historical fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780823450398
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series.
An orphaned street urchin is recruited into an elite school for thieves.
In an alternate world where France is the dominant world power, 13-year-old Tom Morgan has had to scrimp, starve, and steal on the streets of London to survive. Born into a workhouse, he doesn’t know anything about his father, while his mother may have been from North Africa. One thing he does know is the sort of cruelty that awaits the poor who are sent to the workhouse, and he’s determined not to go back. But when their camp is raided and his friends are captured by workhouse agents, the only thing Tom can think of is how to get them out. Enter the Corsair, a cunning and mysterious man with a proposition: He wants to recruit Tom into Beaufort’s School for Deceptive Arts. From nabbing treasures to forging identity papers, Beaufort’s promises to teach Tom everything he needs to know to become a Shadow Thief and a member of the Shadow League, the secret global organization that helps keep the world’s political power in balance. But Beaufort’s has its own rules and secrets, and if Tom is to survive long enough to help his friends, he’ll need to figure them out quickly. Clever and gripping, this fast-paced boarding school story will appeal to fans of the Mysterious Benedict Society and Spy School series.
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781665982283
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
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 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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