A good tale to hand to readers not sure they can handle grisly ghosts.
Can Jules solve the mystery of the ghostly girl in the third-floor window?
Sixth-grader Jules is tired of moving every time her father, who specializes in restoring historic houses, gets a new job. The newest lands them just outside of Hillsborough, Virginia, living in an addition to a crumbling mansion called Oak Hill. While Dad starts to renovate from the ground up and Mom continue to draft her latest mystery novel, Jules is stuck in the middle of the woods with no friends. At first, she doesn’t know she’s being observed by a ghost girl who has forgotten her own name, but soon each begins seeing visions of the other. Something happened in the past that made the ghost girl lock herself in the third-floor room, and the event plays out again every night. With a new local friend, Jules researches what happened at Oak Hill. Can they actually make a difference in the ghost girl’s afterlife? Edgar winner and ghost guru Hahn turns out a surprisingly unspooky history mystery, good for readers who aren’t ready for her chilling Wait till Helen Comes. Jules and the ghost alternate chapters as focal characters; Jules’ are in first person and the ghost’s in an appropriately attenuated third. The menace is mostly in the past in this slightly shadowy, modern fantasy with an alternate-world spin that causes the tale to feel unresolved. The cast is white by default.
A good tale to hand to readers not sure they can handle grisly ghosts. (Supernatural mystery. 7-11)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-85092-8
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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