A diverting mashup of adventure, SF, and familiar creatures.
In Burnett’s debut middle-grade fantasy, earthling twins are stranded on a faraway planet teeming with dangerous mythical beings.
Phoebe and Clarence Davey may be fraternal twins, but these tweens could not be more different. Phoebe is the outgoing athletic one, and her brother is the bookworm that bullies target. They’re both excited when a carnival rolls into their town—it’s there that a soothsayer tells them that their late grandparents Horatio and Selia Ugstad possessed a “powerful object.” The couple had been magicians who used a magic coin in their act, likely the same coin Phoebe and Clarence discover at the Ugstads’ abandoned cabin. When this coin opens a portal, Lodurr, an imp, passes into their world. When they find a way back to Lodurr’s “Wish Star World,” they’re stuck, running across all sorts of beings, from fairies and wizards to menacing lizards. The two will have to find someone to trust if they want any chance of getting back to Earth. The author’s impressive worldbuilding delivers enthralling details, especially regarding the reputedly extinct imps and their six Wish Coins (“Being the oldest society on the planet, imps were a powerful and gifted people capable of natural magic and life longevity”). The story drops Phoebe and Clarence into a motley cast of pirates, gargoyles, and merpeople. The twins make great leads; they squabble just like siblings do, but their closeness is without question. It’s Lodurr, however, who steals the book: In a highlight of the story, the twins have no choice but to take Lodurr to school (as their cousin), where he stirs up trouble in fun, unexpected ways. The author describes environments well and smartly simplifies them as the story unfurls across planets light-years apart. As some plot and character avenues are left unexplored, it seems clear that Burnett has a series in mind.
A diverting mashup of adventure, SF, and familiar creatures.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1670895530
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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