A suspenseful yet small-scale mystery for lovers of comics, art, and adventure.
Gumshoe Kazu Jones and her detective friends are back in this sequel to Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers (2019).
Having solved the dognapping case, Kazuko Jones and her friends pick up a new mystery to solve after three comic-book stores are vandalized with anti-comic graffiti. With pal March’s uncle’s comic-book shop as a possible target, March wants to expose the villain. When March takes the lead and ex-bully Madeleine rejoins the group, the kids start butting heads. The team uncovers the vandal’s connection to a rare comic-book character, but when they keep running into dead-end clues, everything starts to fall apart. Kazu’s home life isn’t much better. Kazu’s mother is bedridden, and her grandmother from Japan, Baa-chan, has come to help around the house. No one will tell Kazu why her mom is sick, so she must uncover the truth on her own. This sequel is just as suspenseful as the first, but it also tackles more emotional issues, like adults keeping secrets, friend fights, and a parent’s mental illness. The characters are well developed and distinct, expressing feelings kids will recognize, like anger, confusion, uncertainty, and grief. With Baa-chan comes Japanese vocabulary and items that play an essential role in the story. Kazu is biracial, with a Japanese mom and white dad; March and CindeeRae present white, and Madeleine is Korean.
A suspenseful yet small-scale mystery for lovers of comics, art, and adventure. (author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-02267-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and...
Catrina narrates the story of her mixed-race (Latino/white) family’s move from Southern California to Bahía de la Luna on the Northern California coast.
Dad has a new job, but it’s little sister Maya’s lungs that motivate the move: she has had cystic fibrosis since birth—a degenerative breathing condition. Despite her health, Maya loves adventure, even if her lungs suffer for it and even when Cat must follow to keep her safe. When Carlos, a tall, brown, and handsome teen Ghost Tour guide introduces the sisters to the Bahía ghosts—most of whom were Spanish-speaking Mexicans when alive—they fascinate Maya and she them, but the terrified Cat wants only to get herself and Maya back to safety. When the ghost adventure leads to Maya’s hospitalization, Cat blames both herself and Carlos, which makes seeing him at school difficult. As Cat awakens to the meaning of Halloween and Day of the Dead in this strange new home, she comes to understand the importance of the ghosts both to herself and to Maya. Telgemeier neatly balances enough issues that a lesser artist would split them into separate stories and delivers as much delight textually as visually. The backmatter includes snippets from Telgemeier’s sketchbook and a photo of her in Día makeup.
Telgemeier’s bold colors, superior visual storytelling, and unusual subject matter will keep readers emotionally engaged and unable to put down this compelling tale. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-54061-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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