It offers some creepy moments and critters, but it’s more often a pale imitation of one of Brian Jacques’ woodland epics....
Over 10 years after Thorn Ogres of Hagwood (2002), a middle volume appears, doing more to indulge the author’s love of grotesque magical creatures than advance his derivative plotline.
The tale zips among points of view as well as back and forth from murky Hagwood Forest to the subterranean Unseelie Court and the mazes of tunnels and caverns deeper down. It sends diminutive Gamaliel Tumpkin and his shape-changing fellow werlings on a search for the hidden casket that holds the beating heart of Rhiannon Rigantona, murderous Queen of the Hollow Hill. The story reads more like a sendup than a credible quest fantasy. Along with silly names aplenty, Jarvis trucks in armies of odd creatures. Snaggle-featured spriggans and glutinous sluglungs (“Snot monsters!” as a revolted onlooker accurately exclaims) keep characters busy between encounters with the odd barn bogle, candle sprite or troll hag. One character is described as a “human dwarf,” and most of the other females are likewise evil, ugly, or, in the case of Gamaliel’s sister Kernella, fat, loud, stupid and in need of rescuing. Following various assaults, the questers and their pursuers gather for a climactic battle that, thanks to a contrived twist, proves indecisive and so leaves the door open for the next episode.
It offers some creepy moments and critters, but it’s more often a pale imitation of one of Brian Jacques’ woodland epics. With slime. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9921-0
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
