Best for readers new to the series, who won’t be distracted by comparisons with the original.
Lyra Belaqua begins her journey north again in this graphic-novel adaptation of Philip Pullman’s classic fantasy.
Twenty years after the publication of The Golden Compass, Melchior-Durand and Oubrerie reimagine the dark fantasy series through the graphic format. This installment adapts the first third of the original novel—in which Lyra leaves her home at Jordan College, finds refuge with the gyptians, and learns the truth about her parentage—leaving the rest of the tale for future volumes. The script is well-paced and deftly condenses the original text to the demands of graphic storytelling. However, the artwork is often disappointing. While the illustrations do a fine job of establishing a sense of time and place, the figures are stiff and don’t do justice to the story’s many charismatic personalities. For instance, the graphic novel’s Mrs. Coulter lacks the seductive magnetism that makes her so dangerously alluring when she first appears in the original novel. Purists may also be annoyed by details that aren’t faithful to the novel. The original text repeatedly describes Lyra as blonde, but she is a brunette here. It’s a minor complaint, but it’s hard to see why a change was necessary at all.
Best for readers new to the series, who won’t be distracted by comparisons with the original. (Graphic fantasy. 11 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-52371-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe.
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such.
It is 1939, and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Kraków when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgórze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz’s words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek’s later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel’s Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first.
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-45901-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
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