Chris’ unresolved home life and an equally open-ended, anticlimactic ending suggest a sequel; readers not yet burned out on...
Recruited to MI18, a top-secret British agency that employs children to gather intelligence, six preteens use their minds over high-tech gadgets to fight crime in this imported debut.
Thirty years ago, the Myers Holt Academy, an elite and secret boarding school that housed the MI18, closed when one of its students, Anna Willows, was kidnapped and presumed dead. Very much alive, plotting revenge and now known as Dulcia Genever, she, along with her adopted twin sons, has been incapacitating the students and faculty that never came to rescue her. The academy is reopened when one of those former students—the current prime minister—appears to be next on the hit list. Following a confusing transition from prologue to story, the novel centers on 12-year-old Christopher Lane, whose father died seven years ago and whose mother has been a recluse ever since. Chris and his stereotypical mix of cohorts (the overweight bully, the foreigner with broken English, etc.) train to develop their Ability, using their brains to their full capacity, as they practice telekinesis and mind reading and prepare to protect the prime minister at the annual Antarctic Ball for children. This training proves to be more interesting than the concluding fight against villainous Genever and her twins.
Chris’ unresolved home life and an equally open-ended, anticlimactic ending suggest a sequel; readers not yet burned out on paranormal boarding schools may look forward to it. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-5200-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Poignant and heartwarming.
Zephyrina the cat, the “Robin Hood of felines,” rescues discarded toys so they can have new lives.
Zephyrina brings toys back to the apartment she shares with Elizaveta and her daughter, Dasha, refugees from war-torn Ukraine. Dasha reconditions Zephyrina’s rescues and sets them outside for three days, just in case they have owners who want to reclaim them. Afterward, they join the other toys in the parlor—the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured. Dasha and Elizaveta don’t know that the toys are sentient. At midnight they abandon their rigid daytime postures to cavort and play, overseen by their leader, Pocket, a tiny mascot bear made to comfort soldiers during World War I. One night, Zephyrina brings back a dirty old bear, and Pocket is astounded. The new arrival, Berwon, might come from a lost shipment of the first-ever stuffed bears, sent from Germany to the U.S. in 1903—and if so, he’s worth a fortune. In the ensuing antics, the unpleasant villain Picky Vicky covets Berwon, and a kind museum curator does, too, but for different reasons. Applegate’s writing is exquisitely nuanced; she couches profound themes in accessible language that depicts relatable situations. Gentle, generous Elizaveta and Dasha poignantly underscore the human impact of wars. Santoso’s enchanting, delicate, black-and-white illustrations bring the timeless feeling of a classic to this hopeful, humanizing story of the distressed looking out for each other.
Poignant and heartwarming. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250904362
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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