A zooming grand-slam of sci-fi fun.
Acevedo (Rescue from Planet Pleasure, 2016, etc.) offers a middle-grade sci-fi adventure about talented father-and-son scientists who find themselves banished to the suburbs.
Thirteen-year-old Alfonso Frankenstein attends the Dr. Moreau Junior Academy, and his father, Dr. Eugino Frankenstein, teaches at the University of Doom. After creating a zombie badger in his Cadaver Recomposition class and setting off a cascade of animal reanimations, Alfonso tries to contact his father. He finds, unfortunately, that because of a “system quarantine” at the university, he can’t communicate with Dr. Frankenstein. He soon learns that his dad has been removed from the University of Doom for “nine counts of playing God”—despite the school’s motto of “LUDIMUS DEUS”: “We play God.” This forces the Frankensteins to move to a battered, split-level home in suburbia. The problems begin immediately when Sarah, a neighbor and Alfonso’s classmate at Ty Cobb Middle School, accidentally hits him in the face with a baseball—although the teenagers soon become friends. However, Alfonso also learns that Professor Moriarty, the family nemesis who orchestrated Dr. Frankenstein’s firing, has apparently followed them to their new home. At school, Alfonso must navigate a new world of bullies and boring assignments while keeping a lookout for the next phase of Moriarty’s vengeful scheme. In this feast of middle-grade weirdness, Acevedo caters to fans of smart, retro sci-fi; baseball; and, of course, gross-out horror. Crackling prose brings the various creatures to life—and often inventive death—such as zombies whose “Feathers and skin crinkled into ash and sloughed away, revealing flesh that glopped from skeletons.” The author maintains a youthful mindset when critiquing big ideas in science, such as the notion of human minds merging with the web: “Is that where they want to meld their consciousness?” comments Dr. Frankenstein. “With cheesy pop-up ads for easy credit and ring tones?” He even establishes a few new elements—such as Otis Carroll, librarian and intergalactic assassin—for use in a potential sequel. By the end, readers of all ages will definitely crave further adventures in this anything-goes world.
A zooming grand-slam of sci-fi fun.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9964039-8-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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