Gripping monster mischief highlights an environmental problem but gives the protagonists little to do.
A seaside vacation turns into a monster attack when plastic ocean garbage undergoes a horrifying transformation in this second installment of an illustrated children’s book series.
Twelve-year-old, red-haired Pixie Van Dimple and her White family have planned a beach day. While off to get fish and chips for lunch, Pixie and her sister, Trixie, tell their father they’re going to use the bathroom—but they are actually heading to the candy store to buy sweets. As they walk back, they decide that since they can’t spot a trash bin, they’ll just dump their garbage in the ocean. It’s the last straw for the sea: Pixie and Trixie’s trash sets off a catastrophic transformation, and a garbage monster rises from the ocean. While the uncredited illustrations keep their bright colors and friendly cartoon feel, the situation described in the text is dire: “All around the girls, death and destruction ensued, the likes of it never witnessed before / On a scale of 1 to ten since you ask, this was spectacularly HARD CORE!” Leaving the sisters behind, the rhyming narrative amps up the worldwide chaos, eventually relating the use of space lasers to solve the plastic mess. Meanwhile, Pixie and Trixie miraculously survive in a huge beach hole dug by overzealous vacationers. Though the monster mayhem highlights the disaster of plastic in the ocean, the tale moves away from the sisters, who just cause the cataclysm and then persevere through no efforts of their own. McAllister uses rhyming phrases of different lengths, with frequent interjections that throw off the scansion. In addition to the complex vocabulary (synchronised quintet, sensitive dermis) that would challenge the picture-book crowd, the uneven font makes for a difficult reading experience. Strong, independent middle-grade readers are the likely target audience for the text, but the flat cartoon images, sanitized of the narrative’s violence, feel aimed at a much younger group. The London author’s comedic tone and action-packed story will appeal to budding environmentalists. But the clunky format and design place the tale between age categories.
Gripping monster mischief highlights an environmental problem but gives the protagonists little to do.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-398-41427-3
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Austin Macauley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...
The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction (Rabble Starkey, 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.
Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.
A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0547577095
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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