Awesome reading that will be most particularly appreciated by those already familiar with the original.
An ancient Greek preteen on the verge of flunking school gets a chance to sail with Odysseus.
Given but 10 days to compose an epic yarn as a class project or be expelled, despairing young Homer finds himself transported into the recent past along with Dory, an enslaved friend with a secret, to the dark and smelly belly of a big wooden horse. That’s only the first stop on a wild string of encounters with drug-dealing lotus-eaters, cannibal Laestrygonians, dead spirits, vicious storms (“We were hosed. There was no getting around it. Making the gods mad was a really bad idea”), and, of course, monsters galore. Recording it all as he goes on an unusually capacious magic scroll, Homer picks up pointers about word choice and grammar, selection of detail (“I’d add more gory details, but it might not be appropriate”), character development, and other writerly skills with much blatantly editorial prodding from Dory. Hoover leaves out the Telemachus and Penelope plotlines but otherwise follows the Odyssey’s general course before closing with happy endings for Homer and Dory both, plus appended lists of people and places, a disquisition on dactylic hexameter, and (for some reason) a recipe for hardtack. Homer presents white, as does Dory, but notes early on that Odysseus and his “guys” all have dark skin, “the color of ebony.” Final art not seen.
Awesome reading that will be most particularly appreciated by those already familiar with the original. (map) (Epic fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-944821-86-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: CBAY
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace.
Two young people of different generations get profound lessons in the tragic, enduring legacy of war.
Raised on the thrilling yarns of his great-grandpa Jacob and obsessed with both World War II and first-person–shooter video games, Trevor is eager to join the 93-year-old vet when he is invited to revisit the French town his unit had helped to liberate. In alternating chapters, the overseas trip retraces the parallel journeys of two young people—Trevor, 12, and Jacob, in 1944, just five years older—with similarly idealized visions of what war is like as they travel both then and now from Fort Benning to Omaha Beach and then through Normandy. Jacob’s wartime experiences are an absorbing whirl of hard fighting, sudden death, and courageous acts spurred by necessity…but the modern trip turns suspenseful too, as mysterious stalkers leave unsettling tokens and a series of hostile online posts that hint that Jacob doesn’t have just German blood on his hands. Korman acknowledges the widely held view of World War II as a just war but makes his own sympathies plain by repeatedly pointing to the unavoidable price of conflict: “Wars may have winning sides, but everybody loses.” Readers anticipating a heavy-handed moral will appreciate that Trevor arrives at a refreshingly realistic appreciation of video games’ pleasures and limitations. As his dad puts it: “War makes a better video game….But if you’re looking for a way to live, I’ll take peace every time.”
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace. (Fiction/historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-29020-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Like its bestselling progenitors, a nonstop spinoff afroth with high tech, spectacular magic, and silly business.
With their big brother Artemis off to Mars, 11-year-old twins Myles and Beckett are swept up in a brangle with murderous humans and even more dangerous magical creatures.
Unsurprisingly, the fraternal Irish twins ultimately prove equal to the challenge—albeit with help from, Colfer as omniscient narrator admits early on, a “hugely improbable finale.” Following the coincidental arrival on their island estate of two denizens of the subterranean fairy realm in the persons of a tiny but fearsome troll and a “hybrid” pixie-elf, or “pixel,” police trainee, the youngest Fowls immediately find themselves in the sights of both Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, a ruthless aristocrat out to bag said troll for its immorality-conferring venom, and Sister Jeronima Gonzalez-Ramos de Zárate, black-ops “nunterrogation” and knife specialist for ACRONYM, an intergovernmental fairy-monitoring organization. Amid the ensuing whirl of captures, escapes, trickery, treachery, and gunfire (none of which proves fatal…or at least not permanently), the twins leverage their complementary differences to foil and exasperate both foes: Myles being an Artemis mini-me who has dressed in black suits since infancy and loves coming up with and then “Fowlsplaining” his genius-level schemes; and Beckett, ever eager to plunge into reckless action and nearly nonverbal in English but with an extraordinary gift for nonhuman tongues. In the end they emerge triumphant, though threatened with mind wipe if they ever interfere in fairy affairs again. Yeah, right. Human characters seem to be default white; “hybrid” is used to describe nonhuman characters of mixed heritage.
Like its bestselling progenitors, a nonstop spinoff afroth with high tech, spectacular magic, and silly business. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-04375-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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