A page-turner with an intrepid protagonist.
Thirteen-year-old Valor is determined to rescue her twin sister, Sasha, from Tyur’ma—a children’s prison resembling Siberian forced-labor camps.
There’s some nice bending of gender tropes right from the start: Valor has the excellent archery skills of her mother—the omnipotent queen’s first huntswoman—and Sasha, poised to be the princess’s adviser, has the intellectual skills and interests of their father—the queen’s top political adviser. Valor’s entire family has been disgraced by Sasha’s imprisonment for allegedly stealing a politically important music box, although the object has not been recovered. In order to free her sister, Valor deliberately gets herself arrested and sent to Tyur’ma. Valor relates the action-packed, suspenseful tale in present tense. Her first hours at the juvenile hall from hell convince her that she must trust a few other inmates to help with her breakout plans. Enormous, tattooed guards called Peacekeepers, a warden whose eyes and personality match the icy landscape, ferocious wolves, heart-racing action scenes, and frequent, impossible brushes with death give the text a feeling of fantasy, although there are no allusions to magic. Valor is both true to her name and resourceful. She also humbly acknowledges her shortcomings, especially errors in judgment, as the plot twists and turns. The satisfying ending includes an easy lead toward a sequel: the real music-box thief has suddenly disappeared. Russian names and words are abundant; the world appears to be populated by light-skinned characters.
A page-turner with an intrepid protagonist. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68119-131-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience.
When siblings Jessie and Evan (The Lemonade War, 2007, and The Lemonade Crime, 2011) accompany their mother on the time-honored midwinter holiday visit to their grandmother’s home in the mountains, the changes are alarming.
Fire damage to the house and Grandma’s inability to recognize Evan are as disquieting as the disappearance of the iron bell, hung long ago by their grandmother on Lowell Hill and traditionally rung at the New Year. Davies keeps a tight focus on the children: Points of view switch between Evan, with his empathetic and emotional approach to understanding his world, and Jessie, for whom routine is essential and change a puzzle to be worked out. When Grandma ventures out into the snow just before twilight, it is Evan who realizes the danger and manages to find a way to rescue her. Jessie, determined to solve the mystery of the missing bell, enlists the help of Grandma's young neighbor Maxwell, with his unusual habitual gestures and his surprising ability to solve jigsaw puzzles. She is unprepared, however, for the terror of seeing the neighbor boys preparing a mechanical torture device to tear a live frog to pieces. Each of the siblings brings a personal resilience and heroism to the resolution.
A fine emotional stretch within reach of the intended audience. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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