Schaefer (The Teashop Girls, 2008) reunites best friends Annie, Genna and Zoe and presents them with their newest challenge, a baking contest featuring some tech-savvy publicity for the shop.
The summer before ninth grade, Annie, barista extraordinaire at her grandmother’s Steeping Leaf teashop, is fully immersed in her scone recipes, endeavoring to create the most original, tasty one for a competition with a grand-prize trip to London. Rules stipulate that entrants keep a food blog to generate interest in their ideas. Finalists for the Chicago-based bake-off will be chosen from the five blogs with the most followers. With the deadline approaching, Annie enlists her friends, family, shop patrons and residents at large of Madison, Wisc., to comment as often as possible on her daily entries of recipes, successes and failures. Annie’s dialogue-oriented narration smoothly melds fair competition with information about scone baking and the myriad wonders of tea drinking without feeling out of teen character. Genna’s return from New York with indications of some anorexic behavior is lightly addressed, as is Zoe’s interest in organic gardening. Meanwhile, Annie’s busy summer is made all the more confusing by a first kiss from her nemesis, Zach, and a nagging feeling that one competitor is displaying poor sportsmanship.
There is nothing like a good clean competition to convey some wise lessons about life, love, friendship and honest achievement. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1959-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A San Diego preteen learns that she’s an elf, with a place in magic school if she moves to the elves’ hidden realm.
Having felt like an outsider since a knock on the head at age 5 left her able to read minds, Sophie is thrilled when hunky teen stranger Fitz convinces her that she’s not human at all and transports her to the land of Lumenaria, where the ageless elves live. Taken in by a loving couple who run a sanctuary for extinct and mythical animals, Sophie quickly gathers friends and rivals at Foxfire, a distinctly Hogwarts-style school. She also uncovers both clues to her mysterious origins and hints that a rash of strangely hard-to-quench wildfires back on Earth are signs of some dark scheme at work. Though Messenger introduces several characters with inner conflicts and ambiguous agendas, Sophie herself is more simply drawn as a smart, radiant newcomer who unwillingly becomes the center of attention while developing what turn out to be uncommonly powerful magical abilities—reminiscent of the younger Harry Potter, though lacking that streak of mischievousness that rescues Harry from seeming a little too perfect. The author puts her through a kidnapping and several close brushes with death before leaving her poised, amid hints of a higher destiny and still-anonymous enemies, for sequels.
Wholesome shading to bland, but well-stocked with exotic creatures and locales, plus an agreeable cast headed by a child who, while overly fond of screaming, rises to every challenge. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4593-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Full-blown middle-volume-itis leaves this continuation of the tale of a teenage elf who has been genetically modified for so-far undisclosed purposes dead in the water.
As the page count burgeons, significant plot developments slow to a trickle. Thirteen-year-old Sophie manifests yet more magical powers while going head-to-head with hostile members of the Lost Cities Council and her own adoptive elvin father, Grady, over whether the clandestine Black Swan cabal, her apparent creators and (in the previous episode) kidnappers, are allies or enemies. Messenger tries to lighten the tone by dressing Sophie and her classmates at the Hogwarts-ian Foxfire Academy as mastodons for a silly opening ceremony and by having her care for an alicorn—a winged unicorn so magnificent that even its poop sparkles. It’s not enough; two sad memorial services, a trip to a dreary underground prison, a rash of adult characters succumbing to mental breakdowns and a frequently weepy protagonist who is increasingly shunned as “the girl who was taken” give the tale a soggy texture. Also, despite several cryptic clues and a late attack by hooded figures, neither the identity nor the agenda of the Black Swan comes closer to being revealed.
However tried and true, the Harry Potter–esque elements and set pieces don’t keep this cumbersome coming-of-age tale afloat, much less under way. (Fantasy 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4596-3
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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