This quick futuristic tale encourages autistic and neurotypical readers alike to venture beyond their comfort zones, albeit...
Interested in idioms and fashion, 11-year-old Astatine is an outsider on literal, scientific, inescapable Elemental Island—she has Social Syndrome in a place where implied, exaggerated autism is the norm.
When foreigner Danny lands in a forbidden plane, Astatine dreams of adventures beyond completing her adulthood thesis. Murky worldbuilding and shallow character development weaken this well-intentioned tale's effect. The portrayal of social people as abnormal may increase understanding of neurodiversity on both sides, but if readers aren't familiar with the historical treatment of autistic people, vague references to "de-socialisation" will have little emotional impact. Conflating autistic traits with entirely scientific aptitudes risks perpetuating stereotypes, especially alongside reductive contrasts between autism and Social Syndrome. Social Syndrome, for instance, is "hugs and wanting to be with people. Talking about life. Being curious about everything and obsessed about nothing." Hoopmann allows little spectrum, autistic or otherwise, outside Astatine's circle; borderline mechanical characters aren't much more than recitations of their obsessions, lacking opportunities to share thoughts or feelings that might add gradations to black-and-white thinking. The desire of some islanders to fly to the mainland and mingle with its social population verges on introducing the spectrum as well as its acceptance, but that may not be easily apparent after so many absolutes.
This quick futuristic tale encourages autistic and neurotypical readers alike to venture beyond their comfort zones, albeit clumsily. (Science fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84905-658-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
The plot is hardly ever credible, but readers will be too scared to notice. And the best horror stories don’t need to make...
Some kids have been waiting their entire lives for a book about a floating eyeball, even if they didn’t know it. This is that book.
This is the kind of book that’s impossible to describe to a friend. Anyone who tries will sound like a small child describing a dream: This boy is in a cemetery. And he pricks his eye on top of a gravestone. And then his eye starts floating out of his head, and it’s flying around everywhere. And then the eye starts telling him to do things, only no one else can hear it. A five-word description might be better: It is a horror story. It has enough gross-out effects to appeal to R.L. Stine fans, and a few scenes near the end are frightening enough to scare full-grown adults. Like the classic Tales of the Crypt comics and Twilight Zone episodes, this is a story with no happy ending. Readers need to know that going in, since for several chapters in a row, it looks as though Jake and his friends might find a way to defeat the monsters. It’s important to remember the title of the book.
The plot is hardly ever credible, but readers will be too scared to notice. And the best horror stories don’t need to make any more sense than a dream—or a nightmare. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: June 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9867914-7-5
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Star Crossed Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Young readers will get the whole of the Helen of Troy story in an amazingly lighthearted way, plus discussion questions, a...
The ninth in a series of rollicking Greek–god-and-goddess tales for those not quite ready for Rick Riordan.
Hades, Ruler of the Underworld, narrates, taking it upon himself to clarify the, er, myths in The Big Fat Book of Greek Myths that his little brother Zeus has propagated. He takes on the entire Trojan War, emphasizing how hard he tried to prevent it. The tone is set right from the cover, on which the beauteous Helen has been tagged by a rebellious Cupid’s arrow right in her shapely derrière. That Smoochie Woochie arrow is what made Helen go to Troy with Paris, leaving her husband Menelaus and causing the whole Greece-and-Troy megillah. Hades prefers hanging around with “Cerbie,” his three-headed dog, and watching wrestling from his La-Z-God recliner, but he tries mightily to head off all the battles that Zeus and the other gods keep inflaming for their own amusement. Since Hades is also god of the afterlife, the ghosts of Hector, Achilles and Penthesilea get to tell their own stories when they arrive at his Motel Styx.
Young readers will get the whole of the Helen of Troy story in an amazingly lighthearted way, plus discussion questions, a glossary and “King Hades’s Quick-and-Easy Guide to the Myths” thrown in for good measure. (Fractured mythology. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4342-6219-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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