Nods to classic time travel stories will delight some readers; those merely looking for a page-turning adventure will find...
Can you change time past without losing what is most important about the present?
For his 12th birthday, British Indian narrator Albert Einstein Hawking Chaudhury receives a pet hamster and a letter from his father, written days before his father’s sudden death when Al was 8. Welford’s voice for his protagonist is engaging, pragmatic, and solid—a solitary boy who is brave and perceptive. Al’s dearly loved best friend is his grandfather, a prodigious memory expert, who emigrated from the Punjab to this northeast part of England as a young adult. The letter instructs Al to find the time machine his father built. Al is to go back to his father’s childhood to avert an accident that would cause his father’s untimely death as an adult. The time machine (an old Macbook, black electronics box, and zinc tub) is portable but unfortunately still hidden in the fallout shelter at the house where Al and his family lived before his father’s death. Al makes several attempts at his mission, each fraught with dangers and mistakes. Welford addresses all the complications of time travel, including the impossibility of being in two places at the same time and the threat of obliterating one’s present self.
Nods to classic time travel stories will delight some readers; those merely looking for a page-turning adventure will find that and more. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-55149-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals.
Is dolphin-assisted therapy so beneficial to patients that it’s worth keeping a wild dolphin captive?
Twelve-year-old Lily has lived with her emotionally distant oncologist stepfather and a succession of nannies since her mother died in a car accident two years ago. Nannies leave because of the difficulty of caring for Adam, Lily’s severely autistic 4-year-old half brother. The newest, Suzanne, seems promising, but Lily is tired of feeling like a planet orbiting the sun Adam. When she meets blind Zoe, who will attend the same private middle school as Lily in the fall, Lily’s happy to have a friend. However, Zoe’s take on the plight of the captive dolphin, Nori, used in Adam’s therapy opens Lily’s eyes. She knows she must use her influence over her stepfather, who is consulting on Nori’s treatment for cancer (caused by an oil spill), to free the animal. Lily’s got several fine lines to walk, as she works to hold onto her new friend, convince her stepfather of the rightness of releasing Nori, and do what’s best for Adam. In her newest exploration of animal-human relationships, Rorby’s lonely, mature heroine faces tough but realistic situations. Siblings of children on the spectrum will identify with Lily. If the tale flirts with sentimentality and some of the characters are strident in their views, the whole never feels maudlin or didactic.
Dolphin lovers will appreciate this look at our complicated relationship with these marine mammals. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-67605-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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