An action story likely to appeal to readers on the younger side of middle-grade.
In Bell’s middle-grade novel, a teenage boy travels to a land of pirates and saves his family from an ancient curse.
Hudson Boone is off to spend the summer with his grandmother. He knows she can be a bit odd, especially since his grandfather’s recent disappearance. But upon arriving at her house, he is shocked to discover that it now carries a nautical theme, complete with a moat surrounding the building. Things become weirder when Hudson goes inside and encounters a collection of glass cats, rooms he is forbidden to enter, and mysterious voices that seem to come from nowhere. Weirder still, a whirlwind snatches Hudson from the house and deposits him in the past, by a pirate ship. Hudson is taken under the wing of Net, one of the youngest crew members, and joins the voyage, which is more about commerce than plundering (“pirates are the truck drivers of the oceans,” Net explains). The biggest threat turns out to be mermaids—they see the pirates as their mortal enemies, and the mermaid leader, Marilla, has a particular vendetta against the Boone family. Hudson learns that the mermaids have been targeting his family for generations (the ship’s captain is an ancestor). With help from the pirate crew and Meri, a young mermaid, Hudson prepares for battle with Marilla. Bell is a vivid writer (“With any luck, this world might just be a dream--like a mashup of the Renaissance Festival, Grandma’s boathouse, and that kid in first grade who always ate the mushy grapes and their stems”), and her world-building makes the book’s more preposterous situations palatable, keeping the reader’s attention on the drama rather than the less fully developed plot. The action scenes are well done, although Marilla is not a particularly compelling antagonist.
An action story likely to appeal to readers on the younger side of middle-grade.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798986606675
Page Count: 161
Publisher: Two Turkey Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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