In a story that begins like a fairy tale but ends with explosions, gunfire and villains dissolving into green goo, readers will plumb the depths of both a mighty mountain and the human heart. An affable, audience-addressing narrator recounts how a tall stranger comes to the village of Aplanap and commissions a single, blue gem-encrusted shoe from cobbler Grel. Magic is clearly at play, for when Grel’s charming apprentice, 13-year-old Hap Barlo, steals one of the blue stones off the magnificent shoe to help a beggar, the shoe loses its luster. Not only that, the noble thief is exiled to the dreaded mines of Mount Xexnax, home to the enslaved, blue-skinned Aukis who do hard labor for greedy humans who covet the Great Blue, a giant diamond sacred to the Aukis. Fortunately, Hap has the determined, brave, ringleted and smitten Sophia Hartpence in his camp! Themes of racial prejudice, slavery, revolution and environmentalism swirl through this sometimes dark but ultimately cheerful adventure, illustrated by GrandPré in arresting charcoals and printed in blue ink. (Fantasy. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-85600-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
A promising fiction debut.
Family secrets, an unsolved bank robbery, summer on a lake, a treasure island and a first romance are the ingredients for this inviting middle-grade mystery.
Unhappy with his new life and new stepfather in Southern California, 13-year-old Trav runs away to the small town in Minnesota where his dad grew up and his grandmother lives. He quickly learns why his mother won’t talk about his father, who died before he was born. Suspected of having robbed a local bank, the man disappeared in a storm, his boat washed up on an island in the lake. Everyone figures Trav knows where the money is, a theory confirmed when some of the burgled money turns up in local stores after his arrival. Trav manages to convince neighbor kid Kenny and his hot cousin Iz of his innocence, and together, they try to figure out where the loot might have been stashed and who has sent Trav a threatening note. Careful plotting and end-of-chapter cliffhangers add to the suspense. The first-person narration suggests that Trav’s imagination has been fed by too much television, but the imagined threats become frighteningly real as the story progresses. Trav’s voice is believable, Bullard’s Minnesota setting full of convincing detail, and the boy’s hesitant romantic efforts add a pleasant embellishment.
A promising fiction debut. (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-544-02900-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Compelling and accessible.
Steven must fight for his own life as well as for his baby brother’s when he’s offered a chance to exchange human life for something better.
Steve has figured out strategies to cope with many of his anxieties and OCD behaviors, but this summer the pressure is on. Readers see through Steve’s eyes his parents' fears for the new baby, whose congenital health issues are complicated and unusual. Readers may find parallels with Skelligin the sibling anxiety and the odd encounter with a winged creature—but here the stranger is part of something sinister indeed. “We’ve come to help,” assures the winged, slightly ethereal being who offers a solution to Steven in a dream. “We come when people are scared or in trouble. We come when there’s grief.” Oppel deftly conveys the fear and dislocation that can overwhelm a family: there’s the baby born with problems, the ways that affects the family, and Steve’s own struggles to feel and be normal. Everything feels a bit skewed, conveying the experience of being in transition from the familiar to the threateningly unfamiliar. Klassen’s several illustrations in graphite, with their linear formality and stillness and only mere glimpses of people, nicely express this sense of worry and tension. Steve’s battle with the enemy is terrifying, moving from an ominous, baleful verbal conflict to a pitched, physical, life-threatening battle.
Compelling and accessible. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3232-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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