When “Plain Jane” Emma tries to thwart her evil uncle’s scheme to take over a master baker’s shop, a lot of slurping, spewing and brewing ensue.
Mr. and Mrs. Burblee are beautiful, thin and perfect in every way except for one annoying detail: their ordinary daughter. They send Emma to gross Uncle Simon for the summer, but he treats her worse than a servant. She overhears a plot between him and his villainous pal, Maximus Beedy (dressed all in white), to coerce Mr. Crackle, a Supreme-Extreme Master Baker, into making them a magical elixir that will turn any food instantly delicious. They prick him with joobajooba poison, which will rob him of his senses one by one, unless he complies. But Mr. Crackle has a few tricks up his toque, as readers learn when he, Emma and her friend Albie descend into the magic flour barrel to a secret, underground spice shop to round up the ingredients. Will they be able to make the elixir by the deadline? To the list of goofy ingredients (Burberry beans, whingbuzzit legs, biddle hegs, fribs, shick shack shree, etc.) add heaps of preciosity and blend with an overly melodramatic plot—the result is tasteless when compared to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the author of which Hashimoto clearly seeks to emulate. Emma is a tough cookie, but this recipe for a fun fantasy falls as flat as a collapsed soufflé. (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-86822-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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