An engaging addition to an entertaining series, with positive messaging and a delightful dog.
In this sixth installment of a middle-grade adventure series, an American cocker spaniel extraordinaire named Dylan Easter Donovan visits Yosemite National Park.
One-and-a-half-year-old Dylan was originally adopted by Casey Donovan’s older brother, who works in South Korea. The challenges of raising a puppy proved too difficult, and he sent Dylan to Casey, who lives in California. The irrepressible dog understands Korean, English, and American Sign Language. He is also the proud recipient of an American Kennel Club Good Citizen certification. But his extra-special talent rests with his superior olfactory ability. In his short life, he has become famous for following his nose, leading to a string of successful search and rescues. Now, he is on the witness stand in the trial of a jewel thief he tracked down and caught. After the canine identifies the thief, Judge Horace Beau calls Casey and the boy’s best friend, Sumo Modragon, both 12 years old, and Dylan into his chambers. It turns out the judge is friends with Cranston Pantswick (aka Cranky Pants), a mega-publisher of children’s books and Casey’s mom’s client. Cranston has asked his friend to tell Dylan and his pals that they have a new assignment. The magnate wishes to introduce his young readers to the wonders of nature, and he wants to send Dylan’s squad to Yosemite for a photo shoot in the great outdoors. Little do they know that Dylan’s skills as well as the squad’s stamina and ingenuity will be put to the test once again. The next day, Dylan; Casey; Sumo; Casey’s mom, Colleen; and Sasha Pantswick (Cranston’s photographer daughter) fly to Groveland, an old California mining town just outside Yosemite. Their first outing finds them panning for gold and searching for a runaway child. But the real challenge begins when they learn that the judge’s brother, Edmund Beau, who runs the local white-water rafting outfit, has been kidnapped.
Troy has created a credible, adorable character in her portrayal of Dylan by combining his realistic canine limitations—he speaks only through arfs, whines, a few grrs, and the occasional pawing of Casey’s leg—with his thoughts (written in italics), which reveal his curiosity, compassion, and childlike vulnerabilities. The lucid prose flows gently, but it is packed with intriguing factoids about Yosemite, its history, and its biodiversity. Supplemental glossaries of ASL phrases and commands and white-water rafting terminology are valuable additions to the book’s information bucket. Dylan’s enthusiastic mental ponderings help young readers sound out complex terms. For example, when he hears about the Ahwahneechee tribe that once populated Yosemite, he thinks “Ah wah nee chee.” There is an abundance of adventures to keep the pages turning—white-water rafting with its attendant mishaps, the search for hidden caves, and a cadre of dangerous bad guys. All of this is interwoven with a healthy supply of tender and humorous respites, including a happenstance visit to an old cemetery with an amusing collection of headstone epitaphs.
An engaging addition to an entertaining series, with positive messaging and a delightful dog.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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