Fantasy readers who love to explore will have days or weeks of entrancing material to obsess over.
A twisty app with a choose-your-own-adventure–style conceit surprises as a fully realized, memorable fantasy novel.
Nine-year-old Roland Bartholomew Dexter III lives in a home that’s part barbershop, part jail. His clothes, his bedding and even his food are made of hair, a circumstance his loving, fearful parents have never adequately explained. As Roland begins to explore his origins, he learns that his dreams, which vividly show what would have happened if he’d made other decisions during the day, may be the key to freedom for his whole family. The many short pages of the app make up a gigantic grid; the endless strands of Roland’s hair weave through it, and at any time, readers can view the map to “see” where they are in the story. Readers make choices by navigating one way or the other, and they can use the map to revisit pages. When a choice is made, pages that no longer apply are blacked out, a nod to one of the story’s themes: the destructiveness of censorship. It seems gimmicky at first, but the writing is wise and witty, even Snicket-y. Roland’s choices in the story are limited and sometimes lead to dead ends, but the story overall is clever enough to sustain any backtracking. By its final sections, when stakes are highest, the way the app balances an engaging interactive experience with a deep narrative becomes truly impressive.
Fantasy readers who love to explore will have days or weeks of entrancing material to obsess over. (Requires iPad 2 and above.) (iPad fantasy app. 9-14)Pub Date: May 4, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Darned Sock Productions
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
A young man who unwittingly helps a punk steal an elderly couple’s television in the first story sets the somewhat uneasy tone for this collection. While glimpses of Soto’s characteristic humor and charm appear in later stories, many of these tales focus on less-than-comfortable events and experiences. There’s a girl whose tattooed and pierced babysitter dyes her younger brother’s hair orange and green, a fact sure to enrage their mom when she eventually finds out; a child who is achingly aware of the enmity of anti-war protesters and simultaneously proud of her immigrant parents’ efforts to improve their lives; and a sad young boy whose painfully polite parents have frozen him out of the family without apparently meaning to do so. Each situation is distinct, clearly drawn and immediate. Soto presents his characters with sometimes insurmountable challenges, but he limns their lives with such vivid descriptions and insights that readers will be left wondering how things work out—and wishing for the best. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-206181-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 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.
