Dedicated spy-thriller and sci-fi fans would probably be able to fill in the blanks, but it’s not worth the effort.
A disappointing second outing finds the titular time-traveling secret agent darting his way through a tangle of nefarious schemes so messy and incoherent that readers have no chance of following him.
A researcher (seemingly) kidnapped in 1973 for nebulous reasons…a mysterious meteoric metal mined in Tanzania in the 1920s and stolen by Nazis for never-explained purposes in 1942…a short hitchhike with the historical French “Black Cruise” through the Iringa rain forest in 1925…a discovery in conveniently untouched former Nazi offices in 1950 Denmark…a car chase and a double ambush in New Mexico….Switching decade and locale with a page turn or, sometimes, just between one panel and the next, Jakobsen pitches his ever-natty hero into and, with equal ease, out of one heavily contrived, tenuously related situation after another. Muddying the waters further, he also folds in supporting characters who either look too much alike to keep straight or are unrecognizable (with the exception of Einstein) caricatures of a suddenly-revealed “League of Extraordinary Scientists.”
Dedicated spy-thriller and sci-fi fans would probably be able to fill in the blanks, but it’s not worth the effort. (historical notes on rain forests, Nazi plunder and other related topics, with period images, appended) (Graphic science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8225-9421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride.
Disaster overtakes a group of sixth graders on a leadership-building white-water rafting trip.
Deep in the Montana wilderness, a dam breaks, and the resultant rush sweeps away both counselors, the rafts, and nearly all the supplies, leaving five disparate preteens stranded in the wilderness far from where they were expected to be. Narrator Daniel is a mild White kid who’s resourceful and good at keeping the peace but given to worrying over his mentally ill father. Deke, also White, is a determined bully, unwilling to work with and relentlessly taunting the others, especially Mia, a Latina, who is a natural leader with a plan. Tony, another White boy, is something of a friendly follower and, unfortunately, attaches himself to Deke while Imani, a reserved African American girl, initially keeps her distance. After the disaster, Deke steals the backpack with the remaining food and runs off with Tony, and the other three resolve to do whatever it takes to get it back, eventually having to confront the dangerous bully. The characters come from a variety of backgrounds but are fairly broadly drawn; still, their breathlessly perilous situation keeps the tale moving briskly forward, with one threatening situation after another believably confronting them. As he did with Wildfire (2019), Newbery Honoree Philbrick has crafted another action tale for young readers that’s impossible to put down.
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64727-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
The dice are rolling readers’ way in this third outing.
Sunny, in seventh grade, finds her score on the Groovy Meter taking some wild swings as her friends’ interests move in different directions.
In a motif that haunts her throughout, Sunny succumbs to a teen magazine’s personality quiz and sees her tally seesaw radically. Her BF Deb has suddenly switched focus to boys, clothes, and bands such as the Bee Gees (this is 1977)—dismissing trick-or-treating and wearing galoshes on rainy days as “babyish.” Meanwhile, Sunny takes delight in joining nerdy neighbors Lev, Brian, and Arun in regular sessions of Dungeons and Dragons (as a fighter character, so cool). The storytelling is predominantly visual in this episodic outing, with just occasional snatches of dialogue and pithy labels to fill in details or mark the passage of time; frequent reaction shots deftly capture Sunny’s feelings of being pulled this way and that. Tellingly, in the Holms’ panels (colored by Pien), Sunny’s depicted as significantly smaller than Deb, visually underscoring her developmental awkwardness. Deb’s comment that “we’re too old to be playing games like that” leads Sunny to drop out of the D&D circle and even go to the school’s staggeringly dull spring dance. Sunny’s mostly white circle of peers expands and becomes more diverse as she continues to navigate her way through the dark chambers and misty passages of early adolescence. Lev is an Orthodox Jew, Arun is South Asian, and Regina, another female friend, has brown skin.
The dice are rolling readers’ way in this third outing. (Graphic historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-23314-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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