by Michael Morpurgo ; illustrated by Michael Foreman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2016
A smooth story for horse-mad readers, but it’s unlikely to find a much larger audience than that.
A "bad lad" combines a passion for horses and music and makes good.
An unnamed protagonist tells his early life story in retrospect for his grandchildren. Born at the end of World War II, never knowing his father, a young boy "no good at anything the teachers wanted me to be good at" learns to play drums under the eye of his only kind teacher. Nevertheless, he falls into worse and worse company, until he becomes a petty thief and then, by age 16, a serious one. Eventually caught, he's sent for a year to a Borstal, a British prison designed to rehabilitate young offenders. He's attracted to the prison's horse farm mostly because the head man plays radio music there, but he soon learns to love the horses, too, particularly an abused young horse named Dombey, with whom he forms a bond. In short order Dombey is sold, the boy's mentor disappears, and the boy is discharged onto the street, where he eventually becomes a soldier and reunites with Dombey. Morpurgo's gently elegant prose makes this slim story flow effortlessly, but there's not much action, and the narrative structure creates a storytelling effect that puts readers at a remove. It reads more like a short story than a novel, even when embellished by Foreman's ink-and-wash illustrations and a 10-page afterward describing the Borstal system and Suffolk Punch horses.
A smooth story for horse-mad readers, but it’s unlikely to find a much larger audience than that. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-8481-2471-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Piccadilly/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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by Stacy McAnulty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2020
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable.
A reward of $5,000,000 almost ruins everything for two seventh graders.
On a class trip to New York City, Felix and Benji find a wallet belonging to social media billionaire Laura Friendly. Benji, a well-off, chaotic kid with learning disabilities, swipes $20 from the wallet before they send it back to its owner. Felix, a poor, shy, rule-follower, reluctantly consents. So when Laura Friendly herself arrives to give them a reward for the returned wallet, she’s annoyed. To teach her larcenous helpers a lesson, Laura offers them a deal: a $20,000 college scholarship or slightly over $5 million cash—but with strings attached. The boys must spend all the money in 30 days, with legal stipulations preventing them from giving anything away, investing, or telling anyone about it. The glorious windfall quickly grows to become a chore and then a torment as the boys appear increasingly selfish and irresponsible to the adults in their lives. They rent luxury cars, hire a (wonderful) philosophy undergrad as a chauffeur, take their families to Disney World, and spend thousands on in-app game purchases. Yet, surrounded by hedonistically described piles of loot and filthy lucre, the boys long for simpler fundamentals. The absorbing spending spree reads like a fun family film, gleefully stuffed with the very opulence it warns against. Major characters are White.
Cinematic, over-the-top decadence, a tense race against time, and lessons on what’s truly valuable. (mathematical explanations) (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17525-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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by Arianne Costner ; illustrated by Arianne Costner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 2020
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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by Arianne Costner ; illustrated by Billy Yong
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