Have (magic) suitcase, will travel.
Twelve-year-old English girl Flick, the imaginative daughter of a post office employee and a garbage collector, isn’t thrilled about moving from their urban tower block to the outskirts of a posh village—until the day she wanders into a magical travel agency. There, she meets lonely 18-year-old shopkeeper Jonathan, who inducts Flick into The Strangeworlds Society, whose members use suitcases to explore different worlds. Jonathan has been abandoned following his father’s mysterious, multiverse-related disappearance, and the two set out to find him. This is classic children’s literature following in a very specific tradition, with portals and adventures that pique the imagination more than the adrenaline. The writing is at times reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones, who similarly envisioned multiverses and populated her very British fantasies with real children frustrated by real concerns: Flick, conscious of her family’s socio-economic status, worries about her new school and carries heavy responsibilities for housework and minding her baby brother, as her parents work long hours and opposite shifts. This series opener takes a picaresque route—including a world of children who never grow up, a giant tree full of magic crystals, and more—and by the end, something larger is clearly in motion. Readers will be eager to visit more worlds with irrepressible Flick and prickly Jonathan. Characters read as White by default.
Utterly delightful. (Fantasy. 11-14)Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8351-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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BOOK REVIEW
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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