by Richard Uhlig ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2013
A fast-moving YA mystery novel.
The death of a small-town minister’s wife leads a teenage photojournalist on a fateful search for truth in Uhlig’s (Last Dance at the Frosty Queen, 2008, etc.) new YA novel based on a real-life murder case.
Ron “Kodak” Riley Jr., a brash, 17-year-old writer, photographer and triathlon hopeful, works for his dad’s weekly newspaper in a small town circa 1990. Frustrated by the town’s white-bread insularity and by his dad’s lack of ambition, he jumps at the chance to take pictures when word comes that a car has driven off a local bridge into the river, killing the wife of well-liked local minister Rev. Mike. Kodak soon finds that certain discrepancies in the circumstances of the crash indicate foul play, despite the skepticism of those around him. The blasé sheriff’s enigmatic, chain-smoking foster daughter, Casey, has her own suspect in mind, but Kodak isn’t convinced until he’s confronted with undeniable proof. The realization goes deep: “I listen to some locusts making their shrill night music outside my window…. Familiar sounds, yet my world has totally changed. I know it will never go back to the way it was.” In an acerbic, fine-tuned first-person narrative, Uhlig clues readers in to the identity of the guilty party early on but keeps the dynamic taut with a shocking but sensitively handled plot twist. The ending takes a hairpin turn that is somewhat unoriginal but nonetheless moving and unexpected. Although Kodak’s facile scatological and sexual vulgarities are predictable adolescent signposts, Uhlig raises the emotional stakes with well-paced glimpses into Kodak’s vulnerability and growing self-awareness: “I stretch out on the grass, staring up at the stars and the moon….Probably some other kid on some other planet is lying on his back right now, staring at me, trying to figure out why he does the things he does.”
A fast-moving YA mystery novel.Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 147
Publisher: Wild Child Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
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by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney
by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney
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SEEN & HEARD
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph
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by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph
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