Ominously topical.
Things take a turn for a trio of friends enjoying a pleasant stay in a mountain cabin when a squad of Hitler Youth members show up.
Bookending his tale with fictive news stories of an attempted assassination and a bank bombing in the once-peaceful town of Heroldsberg, Spradlin continues to record rising tides of anxiety, violence, and antisemitism in Hitler’s increasingly authoritarian Germany. Young Rolf and narrator Joshua manage with difficulty to pry their friend Ansel from the side of his badly wounded journalist father for a vacation trip to Austria—only to see more signs of poverty and unrest than ever, to be refused service in a store because Joshua is Jewish, and to run into Rolf’s estranged older brother, Romer, a vocal member of Hitler Youth. The prospect of a week in the mountains is appealing but hardly have they settled into their isolated cabin than the arrival of a gang of uniformed hoodlums sent by Romer to harass them touches off an escalating flurry of pranks and counter-pranks. Ultimately, the incident turns life-threatening, though events here feel less harsh compared with previous volumes. Once more, Spradlin sets the scene effectively with grim depictions of Nazi-era Europe. In previous episodes the author added an “It Could Happen Here” warning that is absent this time around, but perceptive readers will draw parallels between history and current events.
Ominously topical. (glossary, timeline) (Historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781665947268
Page Count: 144
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace.
Two young people of different generations get profound lessons in the tragic, enduring legacy of war.
Raised on the thrilling yarns of his great-grandpa Jacob and obsessed with both World War II and first-person–shooter video games, Trevor is eager to join the 93-year-old vet when he is invited to revisit the French town his unit had helped to liberate. In alternating chapters, the overseas trip retraces the parallel journeys of two young people—Trevor, 12, and Jacob, in 1944, just five years older—with similarly idealized visions of what war is like as they travel both then and now from Fort Benning to Omaha Beach and then through Normandy. Jacob’s wartime experiences are an absorbing whirl of hard fighting, sudden death, and courageous acts spurred by necessity…but the modern trip turns suspenseful too, as mysterious stalkers leave unsettling tokens and a series of hostile online posts that hint that Jacob doesn’t have just German blood on his hands. Korman acknowledges the widely held view of World War II as a just war but makes his own sympathies plain by repeatedly pointing to the unavoidable price of conflict: “Wars may have winning sides, but everybody loses.” Readers anticipating a heavy-handed moral will appreciate that Trevor arrives at a refreshingly realistic appreciation of video games’ pleasures and limitations. As his dad puts it: “War makes a better video game….But if you’re looking for a way to live, I’ll take peace every time.”
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace. (Fiction/historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-29020-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
With the likes of Peter Raven, Tom Cringle and even Jacky Faber roaming the literary sea lanes, not even the frequent...
In a nautical tale that leaks from stem to stern, a printer’s son survives one unlikely adventure after another after being shanghaied by British privateers.
First orphaned, then sold into indenture on a false charge, then clubbed and carried off to sea, 13-year-old Jameson finds himself sailing into the Caribbean aboard the Destiny, Captain “Attack Jack” Edwards commanding. Jameson inexplicably worms his way into the captain’s good graces despite being sullen, accident-prone and so slow on the uptake that he has to be told twice why the ship doesn’t fly British colors in enemy waters. He goes on at Edwards’ behest to bury a packet of maps in a secret cave during a wild storm for no good reason (except perhaps the general paucity of dramatic scenes), then, before sailing off to deliver the aforementioned maps to Queen Anne (this is 1713), he rescues the captain from being hanged as a pirate by forging a Letter of Marque. The author displays an incomplete knowledge of nautical terminology and the techniques of letterpress printing, and the climactic courtroom scene is so contrived that even Perry Mason would wince.
With the likes of Peter Raven, Tom Cringle and even Jacky Faber roaming the literary sea lanes, not even the frequent references to dung, dirt, blood and noxious foods are enough to float such an underresearched, arbitrarily plotted clinker. (Historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56145-633-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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