Fun and fast moving; a bright, vibrant adventure.
In this debut middle-grade novel, a girl and her talking cat must figure out why all the color has disappeared from the world.
Caitlin Maggert wakes up one day to find all the color has vanished. Her bedroom walls have turned from pink to gray. The brilliant yellow school bus is gray. Everything is gray. Caitlin’s mom doesn’t notice the change. When Caitlin brings it up with her friends—bespectacled Chinese adoptee Trudie and Tennessean Molly—it leads to a calamitous fight. Caitlin has a miserable day at school, but thankfully she isn’t totally alone in seeing the world in its new, colorless light. Her observations are confirmed by her ragdoll cat, Rio, who has started talking. Rio, in fact, has developed several extraordinary abilities, including telekinesis and suggestive mind control over feline lovers. These will come in handy when he joins Caitlin, Trudie, and Molly (now reconciled) in following a drip trail of yellow dots, tracking the missing colors to an abandoned building beyond the local dog park. What dire experiments are being conducted within? Can Rio, Caitlin, and friends thwart the schemes of the villainous MacDougal and return color to the world? In this series opener, Alexander writes in the third person, past tense, from Caitlin’s perspective or Rio’s. The prose is simple but lively, featuring plenty of short sentences to pull young readers along. The dialogue reflects the natural exuberance of schoolgirls on a quest. Caitlin is a likable protagonist—excitable and impatient but generally upbeat, choosing real friends rather than trying to be popular. Rio remains delightfully catlike in his talking form and is a fan favorite in the making. As is common in middle-grade works (and life), many of the events depicted carry disproportionate weight. Quarrels rear up from nowhere and feel like the end of the world. Making up leads to nirvana. The minor characters are similarly unshaded, although the “worst boy ever” behavior by a student named Podge does hint at a developing nuance. The story skips along in an unreserved celebration of the imagination, offering little explanation for its fantastical premises but not really needing to. Readers will take the colorless world at face value and adopt Rio into their hearts.
Fun and fast moving; a bright, vibrant adventure.Pub Date: June 11, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-98607-002-5
Page Count: 137
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Certain to steal hearts.
In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary.
She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. Applegate deftly tempers themes of grief and loss with compassion and humor as Ruby finds her place in the herd. The author’s note touches on climate change, the illegal ivory trade, and conservation efforts, but the highly emotive framing of the story through the memories of a bewildered baby elephant emphasizes the impact of lines such as “ ‘in Africa,’ I say softly, ‘there were bad people,’ ” without offering readers a nuanced understanding of the broader context that drives poaching.
Certain to steal hearts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780063080089
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
