The slow dismantling of Petra’s faith in her loved ones adds a delicious instability to the growing unease of this WWII...
An English girl whose mother is German is ensnared by her neighbors’ bigotry and by apparent treason at the onset of World War II.
Twelve-year-old Petra lives in a lighthouse on the coast of England, so close to Europe that she can see right across to France on a clear day. When the war begins, some of the villagers—her neighbors for her entire life—behave abominably to Petra’s family. Her German-born mother is accused of treason and sent to an internment camp, and though Petra is confident of Mutti’s innocence, someone has been sending state secrets to the Nazis. Could it be that Petra’s nearest and dearest aren’t what they seem? No one in her family is acting normally. The stakes seem to rise slowly, coming to a breaking point as Petra’s personal tragedies intertwine with the grim reality of the Dunkirk evacuation. The (historically accurate) increasing maltreatment of the town’s German-British and Italian-British families increases Petra’s sense of dislocation in her previously cozy village setting (characters are all white). Strange’s deft hand with the had-I-but-known flavor of foreshadowing maintains a beautifully eerie, slightly gothic tone (occasionally at the expense of a believable 12-year-old voice).
The slow dismantling of Petra’s faith in her loved ones adds a delicious instability to the growing unease of this WWII thriller . (Historical fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35385-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Admirable insight, despite being conveyed by a lad who comes across as more a super-precocious, psychologically astute...
Stewart fills in the back story on the narcoleptic genius founder of the Mysterious Benedict Society (2007), planting him amid fellow orphans in an old country mansion.
The leisurely, discursive tale takes young Nicholas— “a boy of whimsical mind, to be sure (though whimsy was not the half of it, nor even the beginning)”—into the financially troubled Rothschild’s End (“or ’Child’s End, as it is often abbreviated”). There, along with the customary sets of brutal bullies, cowed children and myopically semi-competent staff, he encounters his first library, his first real friend and exciting hints of a lost treasure. His search for this last is complicated by his affliction, which is triggered by any strong positive emotion, as well as the fact that he’s locked into a storeroom every night and also continually at risk from the aforesaid thugs. Being smarter than everyone else put together as well as mechanically gifted, though, he turns every challenge into an opportunity and by the end has found the treasure (which turns out to something much better than money), saved the orphanage and forced a truce with the bullies. More significantly, having seen kindness and compassion in action “[h]e might not know what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he knew with absolute certainty how he wanted to be.”
Admirable insight, despite being conveyed by a lad who comes across as more a super-precocious, psychologically astute preteen than a credible 9 year old. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-17619-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
They may have (apparently) lost round one in trilogy opener Billionaire’s Curse (2010), but 13-year-old Gerald and his squabbling twin sidekicks Sam and Ruby aren't giving up. Here they get a taste of the luxury an estate worth £20 billion brings while jetting off to India in high style to claim a second magical artifact before (presumed) murderer and all-around bad guy Mason Green can reach it. Laying broad hints that All Is Not as It Seems—or, as several characters repeatedly whisper, “Nothing is certain.”—Newsome again crafts a lighter-than-air caper. It's all heavily dependent on contrived clues, blundering or oblivious adults, chaperones who consistently vanish just before attackers arrive, conveniently spotty communications, lurid visions and massive gems that evidently sit around for the taking. The pace never lets up, though, and along with learning a bit more about the 1,600-year-long secret that Gerald’s family has been charged with keeping, the young folk survive multiple kidnappings, escapes, chases and life-threatening mishaps. Inevitably they face off with Green again, here inside an ancient Indian temple prone to sudden massive floods. Fans of 39 Clues–style adventures will be swept along. (illustrations not seen) (Adventure. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-194492-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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