It is for Meggie Blue and her family when their tranquil life in North Carolina is interrupted by townspeople rightly...
When aggressive xenophobia closes in, it’s time to record memories in a mysterious whistle, pile into an invisible spaceship and optimistically fly to another planet. Isn’t that what everybody does?
It is for Meggie Blue and her family when their tranquil life in North Carolina is interrupted by townspeople rightly suspecting them of being alien. Though their native tongue is unusual and they sporadically sprout glowing blue hair after a certain age, the Blues are far from threatening and adore the sanctuary Earth provided when pollution destroyed their home planet. However, with their lives threatened, Meggie and her family vacate unwittingly to a parallel world characterized by destitute outlooks, subliminal mind control and really boring clothes. Alternating narration between 12-year-old Meggie and her 14-year-old brother, David, White (best known for Southern coming-of-age realism) paves the way for a relatively broad audience. And though the dialogue has occasional unnatural tempos, these awkward bumps can be chalked up to otherworldly speech patterns. Hovering in the vicinity of ET, The Twilight Zone and 1984, the attractive science-fiction formula accommodates the familiar coming-of-age arc. More important is the underlying theme of originality. Meggie and her family repeatedly have to prove (even to themselves) that being different or just plain alien is more than okay—even if your hair turns blue. A quirky commentary on age, environment, government and self-expression. (Science fiction. 11-14) .Pub Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-73998-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/The Walking Dead/Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats.
The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on—and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness.
Not for the faint of heart or stomach (or maybe of any parts) but sure to be appreciated by middle school zombie cognoscenti. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-22078-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
A thrilling conclusion to a beautifully crafted, heart-stopping trilogy.
This is the moment teens Seth, Anaya, and Petra have both been anticipating and dreading ever since aliens called cryptogens began attempting to colonize the Earth: the chance to defend their planet.
In an earlier volume, Seth, Anaya, and Petra began growing physical characteristics that made them realize they were half alien. Seth has wings, Petra has a tail, and Anaya has fur. They also have the power of telepathy, which Anaya uses to converse with Terra, a cryptogen rebel looking for human allies who could help stop the invasion of Earth. Terra plans to use a virus stored in the three teens’ bodies to disarm the flyers, which are the winged aliens that are both masterminding the invasion and enslaving the other species of cryptogens known as swimmers and runners. But Terra and her allies can’t pull any of this off without the help of Anaya, Seth, and Petra. Although the trio is anxious about their abilities, they don’t have much of a choice—the entire human race is depending on them for salvation. Like its predecessors, this trilogy closer is fast-paced and well structured. Despite its post-apocalyptic setting, the story is fundamentally character driven, and it is incredibly satisfying to watch each protagonist overcome their inner battles within the context of the larger human-alien war. Main characters read as White.
A thrilling conclusion to a beautifully crafted, heart-stopping trilogy. (Science fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-80-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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