An appealing, space-age Robin Hood/Huckleberry Finn combo.
In Miltenberg’s (Thank God, 2013, etc.) middle-grade SF novel, a student’s inability to follow instructions during an intergalactic “Career Day” lands him on Earth.
Ryon XYQZ-4973 is proud to be the worst student in the Rigel-Z star system. He regularly finds himself facing disciplinary action from his crabby teacher robot for various offenses, including hacking the school’s system to change his and his classmates’ grades and turning a space-bus invisible. Unsurprisingly, Ryon doesn’t follow the rules during a class trip to the Grand Central Pan Galactic Port Authority Library Museum and Gift Shop; as a result, he’s accidentally transported to Earth. He’s soon taken in by Melissa and Grant Brooks as their ninth foster child. Someone mishears his name as Ryan O’Ryan, and he doesn’t bother to correct them. Instead, he makes several unsuccessful attempts to use his “smartwear”—a full-body suit comprised of “nano-machines”—to return home, and he eventually resigns himself to staying with the Brooks family for the immediate future. He continues creating havoc, however, much to his foster siblings’ amusement—and soon, he even finds himself saving the world. He also stops trying to get home, as he’s happy to simply be “the worst student on Earth.” Miltenberg’s sense of humor makes this book a delightful read. For example, as part of an onion-themed recurring gag, the children attend “Los Miserobles Middle School, Home Of The Fierce Crying Onions,” complete with a giant onion mascot. That said, some other jokes feel crass, such as a character with the surname “Nonads.” Ryon’s humorous predicaments are often the result of good-hearted ambitions gone awry, which makes him a lovable, relatable character. Over the course of the story, Miltenberg tastefully dips into some serious topics, as well, such as immigration, and includes real-life science facts.
An appealing, space-age Robin Hood/Huckleberry Finn combo.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69784-615-7
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Devastated by her mother’s death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do—at the reading of the will.
Instead of inheriting the position of CEO at the family’s cosmetics firm—a position she has been groomed for—she’s given a life list she wrote when she was 14 and an ultimatum: Complete the goals, or lose her inheritance. Luckily, her mother, Elizabeth, has crossed off some of the more whimsical goals, including running with the bulls—too risky! Having a child, buying a horse, building a relationship with her (dead) father, however, all remain. Brad, the handsome attorney charged with making sure Brett achieves her goals, doles out a letter from her mother with each success. Warmly comforting, Elizabeth’s letters uncannily—and quite humorously—predict Brett’s side of the conversations. Brett grudgingly begins by performing at a local comedy club, an experience that proves both humiliating and instructive: Perfection is overrated, and taking risks is exhilarating. Becoming an awesome teacher, however, seems impossible given her utter lack of classroom management skills. Teaching homebound children offers surprising rewards, though. Along Brett’s journey, many of the friends (and family) she thought would support her instead betray her. Luckily, Brett’s new life is populated with quirky, sharply drawn characters, including a pregnant high school student living in a homeless shelter, a psychiatrist with plenty of time to chat about troubled children, and one of her mother’s dearest, most secret companions. A 10-step program for the grief-stricken, Brett’s quest brings her back to love, the best inheritance of all.
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54087-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Twenty New England horror shorts by Stephen King (and a painfully lofty introduction by old pro John D. MacDonald). King, of course, is the 30-year-old zillionaire who poured the pig's blood on Carrie, woke the living dead in 'Salem's Lot, and gave a bad name to precognition in The Shining. The present collection rounds up his magazine pieces, mainly from Cavalier, and also offers nine stories not previously published. He is as effective in the horror vignette as in the novel. His big opening tale, "Jerusalem's Lot"—about a deserted village—is obviously his first shot at 'Salem's Lot and, in its dependence on a gigantic worm out of Poe and Lovecraft, it misses the novel's gorged frenzy of Vampireville. But most of the other tales go straight through you like rats' fangs. "Graveyard Shift" is about cleaning out a long unused factory basement that has a subbasement—a hideous colony of fat giant blind legless rats that are mutating into bats. It's a story you may wish you hadn't read. You'll enjoy the laundry mangle that becomes possessed and begins pressing people into bedsheets (don't think about that too much), a flu bug that destroys mankind and leaves only a beach blanket party of teenagers ("Night Surf"), and a beautiful lady vampire and her seven-year-old daughter abroad in a Maine blizzard ("One for the Road"). Bizarre dripperies, straight out of Tales from the Crypt comics. . . a leprous distillation.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1977
ISBN: 0385129912
Page Count: 367
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1977
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” to Be Epix Show
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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