This fast-paced chapter book has the action that many new readers crave and rarely find on the bookshelves for their age...
A colossal, mysterious dog protects an ancient Roman family from marauding Volgoths.
Young Gabriel has his bow and arrow ready: He is proud to go with his father, Marcus, into the Crimson Forest, on the lookout for evil forces that have been terrorizing travelers. And he soon gets the action he is looking for: Terrifying Volgoths appear—stand-ins for the Visigoths who invaded the Roman Empire in the late 4th century. The Volgoths are deliciously frightening, with beating bat wings on their helmets, giant red-eyed weasels at their command, and skulls and femurs clutched in their powerful hands. This will satisfy many young readers’ thirst for real action, for monsters and villains that are truly scary, and for dangerous, life-and-death situations. De Vosjoli (Popular Amphibians (Advanced Vivarium Systems), 2012, etc.) delivers all that and more—but leaves out the blood and gore: When a villain dies on the battlefield, he’s dragged underground, and when a spear dispatches a giant weasel, it melts into a black ooze. In the heat of the battle, an enormous dog appears—the eponymous Atticus Rex—to save the outnumbered Romans. While action—arrows zing and swords swing on nearly every page—takes precedence over character development, young Gabriel is very much like the 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds the book is aimed at. He wants to fight alongside his father, but he also sleeps with the candle lit or while clutching the protective amulet of Atticus Rex his father unearths. Two minor quibbles: While Marcus and Titus are very believable names for Roman citizens in the 4th century, Gabriel, Miriam and Charlie are not. And, when Marcus is called to “the front” (mostly out of narrative necessity), young readers are unlikely to understand that phrase without any context. Otherwise, the story is intelligently written and explains just as much as its target audience might need.
This fast-paced chapter book has the action that many new readers crave and rarely find on the bookshelves for their age group.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0974297170
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Advanced Visions Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.
Sutherland’s (Windsong, 2008) contemporary novel takes readers to the small, fictional Australian town of Trundle, offering a peek at the lives of its residents over the course of a year.
Grown sisters Ronnie and Marie have returned to their family home in Trundle, each of them recovering from a personal heartbreak. They’re not sure what to make of their troublesome neighbors, the Lals, who have built a large, modern house next door. The sisters and the Lals are at the core of the story, but Sutherland expertly weaves the lives of various residents into a rich tapestry. Trundle possesses many elements found in any small town: mom-and-pop shops, a struggling economy and a colorful cast of characters. What sets it apart from other towns is a place called Pelican, a commune founded in the 1980s on the outskirts of town. Marie, a former resident who left Pelican under a cloud of disgrace, returns to find she is welcome in the community; burned out from work, Ronnie finds herself restored by her stay there. Meanwhile, the grieving Mr. Lal sees Pelican as the perfect spot to build his own version of the Taj Mahal in tribute to his deceased wife, and his son, Vijay, struggles to find himself and the meaning of life. The story shifts perspective, often jumping among the central protagonists and various Trundle figures, giving readers an intimate view of the town. But well-defined, realistically drawn characters enable readers to easily follow these shifts in perspective. In spite of occasional scandals and disturbing events, Sutherland’s novel is, at heart, a quiet story of ordinary people dealing with everyday problems. Her graceful descriptions—“Through the open window flowed a deep and restful stillness punctuated by the chime of birds and the tolling of frogs”—bring to life both the landscape and the people who inhabit it.
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1426904394
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more...
What if reams of our conventional knowledge are just flat-out wrong—what if, for instance, the division between “perceiver” and “perceived” is erroneous?
Peace theorizes about the nature of human existence and how we interact with our environment. Offering argument as well as description, Peace posits that the prevailing mode of seeing the self as “separate” from what it seen, as well as from others, is unproductive and wrongheaded. Touching on his work with the disabled, he recounts his own life experience, mixing personal anecdotes with excerpts from the writings of American poets Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, as well as the British poets T. S. Eliot and John Keats. The poets serve as de facto guides through this book, as Peace looks to them to provide examples of the kind of consciousness he means to exalt: one where a sense of the self as an entity divorced from the rest of reality is overcome. The effects of this practice, Peace states, will benefit not just humankind, but the entire earth. His scope ranges from the perspective of the individual to the universe itself. At points, his reasoning becomes lost in insufficiently defined terminology or in the abstract nature of its own ideas. Sometimes, it’s unclear whose ideas are whose: “Without consciousness, there is no ‘time’ ” is essentially a paraphrase of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Likewise, Peace’s discussions of perception in relation to the self might have benefited from an examination of the philosophical literature around that topic. There are platitudes, but there are also real insights, as well as a tone that indicates a passionate but tempered candidness. Though the collection as a whole seems elliptical, and at times repetitive, it’s by and large an intelligent project that aims to explore its subject matter outside of the confines of genre boundaries. It is at once an original statement and a bibliography of sources for further reading. Peace’s treatise, with its aggressive tone and pace, will not be for everyone. But this may be a strength, not a limitation.
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more endangered—and perhaps more valuable—in book culture every day.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
