Chillingly tender.
A girl steals a book and is swept up in its eerie origins.
It’s October in East Evansburg, Vermont, and Olivia “Ollie” Adler finds herself distracted from her sixth-grade lessons. She’s reeling from the pain of her mother’s absence, but she’d rather bottle it up than talk about it. Instead, Ollie escapes into books and reads them at her secret swimming hole. One day, a strange woman attempts to cast a book titled Small Spaces into the water. Ollie steals the book and is given a warning: “Avoid large places at night.…Keep to small.” Soon she is wrapped up in the book’s haunting story of loss and a deal made with a being known as “the smiling man.” A class field trip to Misty Valley Farm reveals the truth behind Small Spaces. Can Ollie save her classmates from the smiling man? Or will she, too, succumb to the lure of one of his bargains? The characters are sharply drawn, particularly Ollie and her quirky, bighearted father; one secondary character, black, Jamaican-born Brian, stands out in their mostly white community. The slow reveal of Ollie’s trauma is achingly poignant (her mother’s death isn’t confirmed until nearly halfway through the book). Some elements seem less plausible than others (her teacher leaving kids alone with a creepy bus driver, for instance), but novelist for adults Arden’s (The Bear and the Nightingale, 2017) middle-grade debut is atmospheric horror at its best.
Chillingly tender. (Horror. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51502-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid series starter for tinkerers and adventurers alike.
Even robot cats have a mind of their own.
All 12-year-old Canadian Lacey Chu’s ever wanted was to become a companioneer like her idol, Monica Chan, co-founder of the largest tech firm in North America, Moncha Corp., and mastermind behind the baku. Bakus, “robotic pets with all the features of a smartphone,” revolutionized society and how people interact with technology. As a companioneer, Lacey could work on bakus: designing, innovating, and building. When she receives a grant rejection from Profectus Academy of Science and Technology, a school that guarantees employment at Moncha Corp., she’s devastated. A happenstance salvaging of a mangled cat baku might just change the game. Suddenly, Lacey’s got an in with Profectus and is one step closer to her dream. Jinx, however, is not quite like the other bakus—he’s a wild cat that does things without commands. Together with Jinx, Lacey will have to navigate competitive classmates and unsettling corporate secrets. McCulloch effectively strikes a balance between worldbuilding and action. High-stakes baku battles demonstrate the emotional bond between (robotic) pet and owner. Readers will also connect to the relationships the Asian girl forges with her diverse classmates, including a rivalry with Carter (a white boy who’s the son of Moncha’s other co-founder, Eric Smith), a burgeoning crush on student Tobias, who’s black, and evolving friendships new and old. While some mysteries are solved, a cliffhanger ending raises even more for the next installment.
A solid series starter for tinkerers and adventurers alike. (Science fiction. 8-13)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8374-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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