A playful and educational time-travel adventure.
An imaginative girl learns about her ancestors in this middle-grade fantasy.
Sixth grader Sky lives in Quebec City, Canada, with her parents. When her Papa, a policeman, loses his job, the family must move to her grandfather’s farmhouse. Sky hates the idea of leaving her friends and being home-schooled and refuses to go. Nevertheless, the family arrives at the farmhouse. Grandpa Doc helps her settle into her new room with her prized possessions, including Hoppy, her stuffed bunny. He promises to show Sky her great-grandma Stella’s observatory, perfect for stargazing in the country. He further cheers her up with a coin that spins to reveal “tiny galaxies made up of teeny-tiny stars and planets.” He then asks: “Real or magic, Sky?” Before dinner, the girl explores the outdoors. She and Hoppy find a stone potting shed covered in thickets. The door says “Do Not Enter.” She imagines the shed is a castle, with an adjacent stream as the moat, guarded by a dragon. The magic word unlock allows Sky inside the shed, where she finds a candlestick telephone. Miraculously, a phone operator promises to connect her to someone named Lune. Lune is a girl living in the Pyrenees region of France 50,000 years in Sky’s past. Lune’s relatives are the Tainted Ones, who are subjugated by Loch, king of the Powerful Ones. Loch hears the Full Moon speak, and it wants him to punish the Tainted Ones, who have Tall Tribe ancestry. Will Loch sacrifice Lune’s family before a hero can intervene?
Stokely aims to introduce middle-grade audiences to the Ice Age and narrative flexibility in this fantasy adventure series opener. The issue of whether something is real or magic—part of Sky’s reality or imagination—brings joy to the proceedings. Hoppy often talks to Sky, offering a unique perspective. For example, the rabbit says, “That was a huge dragon!”—though Sky believes it’s the size of a “small dog.” When she’s transported to the past, she returns wearing a bracelet, a detail that sharp readers will find noteworthy. At the other end of the imaginative spectrum, Loch hears the Full Moon and justifies his evil, but the tribal Medicine Man knows he’s mentally ill. The author expounds on this later when Sky wonders if “something happened” to Loch “and he turned evil?” While the prose moves swiftly, moments of beauty linger, as when Sky explores a cave beneath a frozen lake: “The sunlight was trapped—endlessly bouncing from the clear, fresh flowing water below to the icy ceiling that soared high above. The whole place was illuminated with a turquoise glow.” There are scary moments, too, as when Sky stumbles into gory animal heads hanging from a tree. Overall, Stokely whets young readers’ appetites regarding humanity’s origin as tool users without eclipsing the story. And if modern humans resulted from the sometimes-violent merging of ancient tribes, Grandpa Doc reminds Sky that “out of most battles, something wonderful happens that would have never happened otherwise.” Rosalind’s detailed black and white illustrations jubilantly punctuate the tale.
A playful and educational time-travel adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73557-850-7
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Kari\Stokely
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With comically realistic black-and-white illustrations by Selznick (The Robot King, 1995, etc.), this is a captivating...
Nicholas is a bright boy who likes to make trouble at school, creatively.
When he decides to torment his fifth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Granger (who is just as smart as he is), by getting everyone in the class to replace the word "pen'' with "frindle,'' he unleashes a series of events that rapidly spins out of control. If there's any justice in the world, Clements (Temple Cat, 1995, etc.) may have something of a classic on his hands. By turns amusing and adroit, this first novel is also utterly satisfying. The chess-like sparring between the gifted Nicholas and his crafty teacher is enthralling, while Mrs. Granger is that rarest of the breed: a teacher the children fear and complain about for the school year, and love and respect forever after.
With comically realistic black-and-white illustrations by Selznick (The Robot King, 1995, etc.), this is a captivating tale—one to press upon children, and one they'll be passing among themselves. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-689-80669-8
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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