In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
From Billingsley (Well-Wished, 1997), an inventive and romantic fusion of the selkie tale with that of a nameless, hungry Folk who must be kept at bay. Corinna is crafty and sullen: she lives in the cellar of a foundling home whose dark and damp she loves, and keeps the Folk quiescent by offerings of food, and circles of iron and salt. She has made herself into a Folk Keeper by cutting off her silver hair, which grows wondrously, and passing herself off as a boy, for only boys perform this task. She has no training but she listens and learns, and when she is summoned to a great estate, she seizes the opportunity. Still in her boy’s disguise, she becomes Folk Keeper at Lady Alicia’s Cliffsend by the sea. With Lady Alicia’s son, Finian, Corrina learns from and loves the sea, which speaks to her in new ways, but mysteries of a former Lady, a buried child, and the sinister Sir Edward cloud her understanding. Writing in a diary format, with saints’ and solstice celebrations marking the movement of the Folk, Billingsley makes a rich metaphor of Corrina’s rejection of food and warmth, and weaves the discovery of her magic into the unfolding of her selfhood and her true history. This will surely enthrall those who loved Berlie Doherty’s Daughter of the Sea (1997). (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82876-4
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
Scieszka and Lane’s intrepid heroes of The Time Warp Trio are once again up to their necks in very silly historical circumstances. Joe, Fred, and Sam are horsing around during their school play—which they wrote themselves—about the ancient deities of Greece. When a cardboard thunderbolt accidently hits the magic blue book stashed in Joe’s backpack, the three boys are transported back to ancient Greece—or so they think. When they meet some of the wisecracking gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus, they realize they’ve been transported to the fictionalized Greece of their play, complete with dialogue they wrote using “The Book of Snappy Insults.” While flinging around backhanded compliments with Hera (who’s not bad on the uptake), the three time travelers try to locate their blue book of magic so they can return home. Instead, they end up as that night’s entertainment for the gods. The opening jokes fall flat, but then Joe comes up with some last-minute parlor tricks. Just when everything’s going well, a pack of Greek monsters arrives, and the mountain top threatens to become a battlefield. The wordplay is still fast and funny, and fans of the series will not mind that the deities have become sort of stock types; the abundance of goofy Groucho Marx-style zingers will keep everyone else smiling. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88596-7
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
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