While debut author Ormsbee’s use of language is laudable and the fantasy details are imaginative, they cannot compensate for...
Two things make 12-year-old orphan Lottie Fiske’s sad life happier: her friendship with Eliot and the magical apple tree near her boardinghouse.
Every year, Lottie receives birthday presents in a hole at the base of the tree—the exact presents she has requested. This year, Eliot is incurably ill, with just a few weeks to live, so she wishes for his recovery; that birthday, a white finch appears. One day Lottie discovers a sprite in her closet. Adelaide Wilfer takes her “root shooting” in the apple tree to another world layered below Lottie’s. Adelaide’s father is a healer (and the birthday gift–giver) working on medicine for the Otherwise Incurable. Lottie discovers she is a Halfling—half human and half sprite—and also is the Heir of Fiske, which seems to have some significance. When the cruel king of this world kidnaps Mr. Wilfer, Lottie, Adelaide, her brother, Oliver, and a halfling sprite-wisp named Fife journey to the castle to find Mr. Wilfer and the medicine for Eliot. The arduous journey involves magical creatures, a swamp of oblivion, strangling vines, travel through plague-ridden wisp territory and more. Lottie is spunky and likable; the interplay among the four travelers is engaging. Unfortunately, the protracted story introduces unexplained elements and has a weak, confusing ending.
While debut author Ormsbee’s use of language is laudable and the fantasy details are imaginative, they cannot compensate for the novel’s flaws. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1386-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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