The terrifying allure of survivalism makes this journey through trauma a compelling one.
A year after the death of his mother, a major in the Air Force, eighth grader Derrick preps for doomsday.
If it weren’t for the Apocalypse Soon! blog, Derrick wouldn’t know that the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park will go off in just three weeks, on Sept. 21. He wouldn’t know how to prepare for the “big one” by reinforcing his family’s shed, practicing pushups, and laying in survival supplies such as MREs and fish amoxicillin. His friends only humor him, but preparing for the end helps calm Derrick’s buzzing skin and panicked sweats. If only the weird neighbor girl didn’t keep poking her nose into everything. Misty’s nice and funny, but why is she throwing hatchets in the yard, for goodness’ sake? Not to mention her sewer spelunking and pigeon training. Derrick’s focused only on his apocalypse anxiety and is detatched from everything else: from family and friends, from vague memories of Misty’s recent kidney transplant, and, most of all, from grief. Misty, ever plucky, however, is determined to befriend Derrick and become his “apocalypse assistant.” With her persistent empathy and philosophical kookiness, she sometimes borders on manic pixie dream girl, but this is overall a sympathetic and even sometimes funny look at anxiety disorders and the complexity of grief. Derrick and Misty both seem to be white.
The terrifying allure of survivalism makes this journey through trauma a compelling one. (author’s note) (Fiction.11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-735-22801-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Droll farce yields to intriguing mystery, leaving the seams between them showing
When an overbearing headmistress and her odious brother drop dead, seven Victorian schoolgirls decide to run their school without adult interference.
It’s an ordinary Sunday dinner at Saint Ethelreda’s School for Young Ladies until Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Aldous Godding choke on their veal and fall over, dead as a pair of unpleasant doornails. All of the seven students at Saint Ethelreda’s, from Dull Martha to Dour Elinor, are horrified at the notion of their inevitable separation. Once they tell the authorities about Mrs. Plackett’s death, surely they will all be sent back home to their dreadful families and shunted off to far worse schools. All seems lost until Smooth Kitty asks the others, what if they just don’t tell the authorities about their headmistress’s untimely demise? What follows is classic farce, as the young ladies spend the rest of that evening desperately hiding the corpses and their headmistress’s absence from an unprecedented stream of callers. Stout Alice is disguised as Mrs. Plackett, Disgraceful Mary Jane initiates the garden gravedigging, and Pocked Louise helpfully adopts a puppy. A third of the way through the novel, the breakneck shenanigans abruptly settle, becoming merely the backdrop of a fairly classic drawing-room mystery. The young ladies are charming and their problem-solving ingenious, though the epithets used to describe them—it is never “Roberta,” always “Dear Roberta”—get old very quickly.
Droll farce yields to intriguing mystery, leaving the seams between them showing . (Farce/mystery. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59643-956-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Flashes of inspiration light up a protagonist with plenty of spine, a plot too dependent on set pieces and a colorful but...
Larson weaves a patchwork mix of trite and truly excellent ideas into this chronicle of a young fugitive’s first year at princess school.
Having neither name nor past and first met racing through an enchanted forest clad only in spider webs, “Cadet Eleven” (Evie for short) finds herself enrolled in a school for combat princesses after rescuing hunky prince Remington from a witch’s cage. Under the tutelage of a tiny but fierce Fairy Drillsergeant and other faculty, she learns how to fight witches with “Courage, Compassion, Kindness, and Discipline,” along with ball-gown tailoring and other princessly skills. Meanwhile Remington and the other young men (except for one, who enrolls with the princesses because he was raised as the designated girl in a family of 22 boys) are in the school’s other wing training to be dragon-killing knights. Romance ensues, as do sharp conflicts when Evie, whose past is illuminated bit by bit in arbitrarily timed visions and revelations, turns out to have been lovingly raised, though not by humans. By the end, Evie has won her way past tests and rivalries, fought several witches (scary ones, too), and caught hints of both her human parentage and a promising destiny among such warrior greats as Cinderella and Snow White.
Flashes of inspiration light up a protagonist with plenty of spine, a plot too dependent on set pieces and a colorful but quickly sketched supporting cast. A sequel-worthy debut nonetheless. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16324-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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