Few will make it to the monster’s first mention, nearly halfway through. (Horror. 9-12)
Is there a secret in the swamp that can cure all ills? Piper’s banking on it.
Piper Canfield wished for a baby sister when she learned her parents couldn’t have any more children. She promised to watch over the baby if it came. Miraculously, baby Grace arrived, and Piper has made good on her promise, but one lapse puts Grace in danger when a rabid wolverine threatens her in her bassinet while the family is camping. Grace is fine, but Piper blames her best friend, Tad, and freezes him out. She starts running with the popular, pretty crowd until baby Grace comes down with Alpers syndrome, a virtual death sentence…and Tad suggests they use his ancestor’s notes to search the Okefenokee Swamp for a fabled silver flower that cures all diseases. Piper, Tad, Monty (aka Creeper, Piper’s little brother) and swamp-boat driver Perch head out on what they think will be a one-day excursion, but the wildlife is attacking when it shouldn’t—and something deeper in the swamp is even more dangerous. Readers drawn in by the Goosebumps-like cover will quickly set aside Lettrick’s second animals-attack tale (Frenzy, 2014). The kid characters have an unfortunate tendency to speak like college professors, hampering their development significantly. Also hindering the story’s effectiveness are interspersed excerpts from Tad’s ancestor’s 19th-century diary, rendered in florid prose.
Few will make it to the monster’s first mention, nearly halfway through. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4231-8695-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
The scion of a once-prominent, wealthy family, Hector Bell engages in ingenious bartering and wishful thinking to support his wife and sons, Cyrus and Darius, on the decaying estate, while he writes stories no one wants to read. Now it’s time to present the town with the Bell Gift, a requirement of the original land grant, but unlike his forebears, Hector has nothing to give. Exasperated by Hector, Cyrus is preparing to head off to university and study engineering, but his younger brother, Darius, longs to solve their father’s dilemma. When a small earthquake opens up a cave on the estate, Darius thinks he’s found the answer, but each step brings new challenges. He’ll need inventive ideas, resourcefulness and most of all help from his friends to meet them. Much of the pleasure in this ode to “life [as] what happens while you’re busy making plans” lies in Hirsch’s dry, understated humor and his subtly charming characters, who are willing to put up with one another’s foibles and eccentricities, however annoying, for the sake of friendship. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-935279-65-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
The success of Mah’s memoirs (Falling Leaves, 1997, for adults and Chinese Cinderella, 1999, for kids) led to her well-received novel Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society (2005) and historical overview China: Land of Dragons and Emperors (2008). Here, she tries to combine them all, blithely and unwisely stepping beyond her literary capabilities. Readers initially meet CC (the character from the previous novel) on what seems to be a mission in World War II China. Chased, she falls and enters a coma. A doctor hypnotizes her, and readers shift to the Song dynasty and CC’s previous life in a star-crossed romance, observing the scene in the famous painting Along the River at the Qing Ming Festival. Both setting and emotional tension rely heavily on cliché and exclamation points. The author abuses dialogue to cram in historical details (a visitor exclaiming “Good tea!” is treated to an encyclopedic definiton of white tea). It is unclear what story she is trying to tell: the romance? the story of the painting? the bookend of CC’s coma, which will be inexplicable to readers unfamiliar with the previous novel? As none succeed, the question may go unanswered. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73895-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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