Leave this novel at the bottom of the rabbit hole.
The beloved children’s classic is reimagined as a teen treatise on environmental activism.
After Alice’s parents die in a car accident on the way to protest farmland rezoning in Wonderland, Illinois, she vows to keep their ideals alive by staging her own actions. After a failed solo attempt to steal school letterhead and donate it to the recycling center, Alice decides to join forces with a vigilante eco-group whose members resemble the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat. Together, they vandalize private property and homes in the name of environmentalism, rescue a pig from experimentation, and investigate why Wonderland township is forcing family farmers off their land and building housing complexes. At least, that’s what they seem to be investigating. The overwritten prose is so densely populated with self-conscious similes and metaphors it is often difficult to follow the convoluted plot. Far too many actions and statements are repeated in greater detail in the following paragraph, to the point where readers may feel they’re being told over and over what just happened. Finally, the author is so busy making the characters painfully and obviously conform to their literary counterparts that any spark of personality or characterization is squashed. What is left is a message-y, cliché-ridden mishmash that neither breaks new ground nor pays homage to its inspiration.
Leave this novel at the bottom of the rabbit hole. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4405-8466-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Merit Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
The book closes with drama enough for a sequel; action-happy readers will be hoping for it
A steampunk thriller uses Victorian science as a framework for cinematic monster goofiness in 1838 London.
It's been six months since 15-year-old Julius Caesar Higgins' last time-travel adventure (Julius and the Watchmaker, 2014), but it seems he has to save the world yet again. Together with his guttersnipe BFF, Emily, Julius has to defeat a passel of villains perfect for animation: tiny, odd-faced Mr. Tock; a pair of comical-but-dangerous thugs, one short and solid, the other tall and "thin as a workhouse dog" with a face "like a stalactite"; Abigail, the murderous automaton made of forks and knives and pocket watches, like a 10-foot praying mantis crossed with a spider; and countless ambulatory, zombifying, soul-catching orchids that pull themselves from their pots and chase their victims. In a twist, they travel through time and temporarily look like “native” children in a village in Brazil, “gone all brown.” (The characters otherwise all appear to be white; Emily speaks in exaggerated, spelled-out lower-class English: "Frough wot?"; "I wasn't planning on nicking naffing.") There they visit Charles Darwin, who in history at this point was visiting local botanical gardens and documenting insects but who here is ineffectually rescuing nonverbal native children from the soul-catchers, which leave their hosts planted husks, like some sort of Anne Geddes or Giuseppe Arcimboldo portrait gone horrifically wrong. Julius’ self-talk, printed in italics, peppers the text: “Concentrate, Higgins.”
The book closes with drama enough for a sequel; action-happy readers will be hoping for it . (Steampunk. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-925240-17-7
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Text
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A story about losing yourself in the quest to belong that gets lost in its own telling.
Fourteen-year-old Jack Sprigley is different from the rest of his eighth-grade class in one very embarrassing way: he hasn’t hit puberty.
Convinced that being “stranded on Pubeless Island” will cost him his friends, Jack, who is white, concocts a plan to literally fake it until he makes it. This includes saying and doing whatever it takes to persuade his classmates of his manliness, including seizing an opportunity to regain his popularity by appearing on a television show and presenting a new and improved Jack to the world. It’s a tangled web, and in the end, Jack doesn’t even recognize himself. Real-life puberty is awkward enough, but it’s nothing in comparison to Jack’s cringeworthy attempts to convince everyone at school that he belongs. This novel is not for the squeamish. From telling friends that he spent two weeks of school break masturbating incessantly to actually considering wearing a “merkin” made with someone else’s pubic hair, readers will need to have a high tolerance for embarrassing situations. The discomfort overshadows other elements, such as his father’s death, which might have more to do with Jack’s desire to be seen than just a lack of pubic hair. While this vicarious trip through puberty may be so extremely awkward readers’ own journeys can’t help but feel easy by comparison, it’s pretty one-note.
A story about losing yourself in the quest to belong that gets lost in its own telling. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7972-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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