Mary Downing Hahn fans will enjoy this just-right blend of history and spooky.
A ghost haunting prompts a Chicago girl to investigate her local history.
Seventh grader Claire loves the predictability of science while her father relishes the paranormal, running a ghost-tour business in Chicago. Their worlds collide when Claire must help out her father at the last minute, and a ghost boy not only becomes an unwanted passenger on the bus, but follows her home and around the city. Currie’s visceral descriptions of the boy’s haunting—scratching behind walls, dripping water, icy air, scrawled notes, and more—exude creepy. Also scary to the middle schooler is losing Casley, her best friend and science fair partner, to Emily, the new girl in school who’s preoccupied with makeup. When Claire can no longer keep the ghost a secret, she recruits her older brother, along with Casley and Emily, to help her discover his identity. As she tries to apply the scientific method to the paranormal mystery, Claire realizes as well that there’s a human story behind every historical event. And as finding the ghost’s story becomes her mission, she researches a true Chicago disaster that killed more lives than the sinking of the Titanic. In the process, she also learns that jealousy hinders female solidarity. The historical details are fascinating, and the lessons Claire learns are lightly delivered. All characters, including the ghost boy, assume the white default.
Mary Downing Hahn fans will enjoy this just-right blend of history and spooky. (author’s note) (Paranormal suspense. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0972-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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
A grave tale indeed, if not entirely serious. (Supernatural adventure. 10-13)
Blood both spills and tells in a small Connecticut town when 13 bad-seed specters from the same family escape from their crypt one Halloween.
They range from an 18th-century highwayman to a murderous Capone-era gangster dubbed “Crazy Izzy” and were all confined in the same tomb years ago thanks to spells cast by Zack Jennings’ three great-aunts. Eleven-year-old Zack’s inherited ability to see ghosts may be a mixed blessing at best, but it comes in handy when the 13 spectral Icklebys break out, seize control of their nerdy but increasingly willing descendant Norman and embark on a vengeful crime spree. Fortunately, most of the Icklebys turn out to be easily sidetracked, and equally fortunately Zack has allies on both sides of the dirt (as the author puts it), from the aforementioned great-aunts (weird sisters indeed, flying in from their Florida retirement home with a full stock of witchly goods and exorcism chants) to a headless cat ghost. As in Zack’s three previous Haunted Mystery outings (The Smoky Corridor, 2010, etc.), the pace never flags. Through flurries of ultra-short chapters, events spiral to a suspenseful climax, and the mix of corpses and comedy add up to a faintly macabre tone that isn’t dispelled even by the end’s just deserts and happy outcomes.
A grave tale indeed, if not entirely serious. (Supernatural adventure. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-86900-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
