Never mess with magic—it may come back to bite you.
For two English siblings, a stay with their magician grandfather turns into a challenging adventure to find their missing grandmother.
Eleven-year-old Hedy van Beer and her 8-year-old brother, Spencer, are taken to stay with their reclusive, eccentric Grandpa John while their archaeologist parents head to Spain on a dig. Hedy wants to go with them and dreads a boring time in an old house in a village with no friends, internet, or video games. However, she gets more excitement than she bargained for. Things start to go awry when the curious children venture into Grandpa John’s forbidden spaces in search of their Grandma Rose, who disappeared years ago during a bungled magic trick. Mysterious messages from Grandma Rose start to appear, and the children feel compelled to try to find her. A table from which things disappear, the talking comedy duo of a stag’s head and a bear’s pelt, creatures who skitter around under the floorboards, a ghostly piano player, and various weird and wonderful characters materialize. As the children investigate their grandfather’s history, their mission gets darker, leading to a dramatic denouement in which Hedy uses all her courage to battle evil magical forces. Hedy and Spencer, who read as White, also discover interesting news about their family history. The book may be long, but the plot twists are gripping enough to sustain readers’ attention. The end hints at a sequel.
Never mess with magic—it may come back to bite you. (Paranormal mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-66517-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark.
An animal ghost seeks closure after enduring aquatic atrocities.
In this sequel to The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter (2020), sixth grader Rex is determined to once again use his ability to communicate with dead animals for the greater good. A ghost narwhal’s visit gives Rex his next opportunity in the form of the clue “bad water.” Rex enlists Darvish—his Pakistani American human best friend—and Drumstick—his “faithful (dead) chicken”—to help crack the case. But the mystery is only one of Rex’s many roadblocks. For starters, Sami Mulpepper hugged him at a dance, and now she’s his “accidental girlfriend.” Even worse, Darvish develops one of what Rex calls “Game Preoccupation Disorders” over role-playing game Monsters & Mayhem that may well threaten the pair’s friendship. Will Rex become “a Sherlock without a Watson,” or can the two make amends in time to solve the mystery? This second outing effectively carries the “ghost-mist” torch from its predecessor without feeling too much like a formulaic carbon copy. Spouting terms like plausible deniability and in flagrante delicto, Rex makes for a hilariously bombastic (if unlikable) first-person narrator. The over-the-top style is contagious, and black-and-white illustrations throughout add cartoony punchlines to various scenes. Unfortunately, scenes in which humor comes at the expense of those with less status are downright cringeworthy, as when Rex, who reads as White, riffs on the impossibility of his ever pronouncing Darvish’s surname or he plays dumb by staring into space and drooling.
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark. (Paranormal mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5523-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Atmospheric but at times frustratingly flat.
A recent transplant wrestles with her seaside town’s complicated and ghostly history.
Twelve-year-old Mallory Denton has moved from Chicago to a tiny New England town. Eastport, Massachusetts, is a popular tourist destination, relying on its long and spooky history to keep its economy thriving. Its attractions include Mallory’s parents’ creepily themed restaurant that abuts a cemetery. Sweet Molly’s is Eastport’s most famous story, commemorated as the chief attraction in an annual parade. The legend tells of the time Molly Flanders McMulligan Marshall lost her twin brother, Liam, at sea when the townspeople pressured him to go out in his fishing boat even as a dangerous storm approached. After Mallory begins to see Molly in visions and nightmares, she must find a way to break Molly’s curse on the town before the vengeful ghost can exact her furious otherworldly revenge on the town that monetizes and celebrates her trauma. In tense, fast-paced chapters, Currie concocts a chilling setting replete with haunting spectral scares set in a town with an accessible but intriguingly complicated history. However, the thrills ultimately fizzle, as much is told rather than shown and pivotal plot points are revealed too soon and resolved too quickly and tidily. While some scenes are chillingly rendered, they lose their panache when juxtaposed against moments of cloying predictability. Most characters read as White.
Atmospheric but at times frustratingly flat. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72823-654-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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