Four African-American fourth-graders have to lay aside their quarrels to save the Earth from an invasion of icy zombies.
Storywise, Bass doesn’t try for anything complicated or, for that matter, particularly logical. Having dropped a very important ring in the halls of Thurgood Cleavon Wilson Elementary, giant ice king Zenon threatens nerdy narrator Bakari Katari Johnson with a planetary invasion to get it back. Bakari is mystified until he spots the ring on the finger of classmate Keisha, mouthy mouthpiece for smug all-star athlete/teachers’ pet Tariq. It all sets off a round of squabbles and hall and lunchroom fracases with shambling zombie minions, a visit to Zenon’s icy dimension, and finally a bit of magic using the ring and a special marble that Bakari just happens to have from his granddad to close the gates to the Zombie Zone forever. Along with Bakari’s chubby best friend, Wardell, the young folk go from enemies to allies by the end. Craft tucks in lots of fluidly drawn scenes featuring purse-lipped students with oversize heads, jagged-edged attackers and the aforementioned ring in action.
Rote of plot and themes but with a (human) cast that does address a definite lack in the largely lily-white throngs of middle-grade fantasies. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-13210-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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Two shelter cats take on a mysterious puss with weird powers who is terrorizing the feline community.
Hardly have timorous (and aptly named) Poop and her sophisticated buddy, Pasha, been brought home by their new “human beans” for a two-week trial than they are accosted by fiery-eyed Scaredy Cat, utterly trashing the kitchen with a click of his claws and, hissing that he’s in charge of the neighborhood, threatening that if they don’t act like proper cats—disdaining ordinary cat food and any summons (they are not dogs, after all), clawing the furniture instead of the scratching post, and showing like “cattitude”—it’ll be back to the shelter for them. Will Poop and Pasha prove to be fraidycats or flee to the cowed clowder of homeless cats hiding from the bully in the nearby woods? Nope, they are made of sterner stuff and resolutely set out to enlist feline allies in a “quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of purrs!” Cast into a gazillion very short chapters related by furry narrators Poop and Pasha, who are helpfully depicted in portrait vignettes by Herzog at each chapter’s head, the ensuing adventures test the defiant kitties’ courage (and, in some cases, attention spans) on the way to a spooky but poignant climax set, appropriately enough as it happens, in a pet graveyard.
A-mew-sing fare for readers who sometimes feel like fraidycats themselves. (Adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-49443-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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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
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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