by Shelley Tougas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2015
Entertaining and humorous; good light fare for middle graders
A 10-year-old searches for Al Capone's lost treasure.
It's Christa's last summer in the north woods of Wisconsin: her teacher father has lost his job, and the family cabin is for sale. Everything's different—her parents are working temp jobs instead of relaxing, her 16-year-old sister is too busy waitressing to be any fun, and their grumpy neighbor has retired (thus able to bear witness to Christa's many escapades) and now has his 11-year-old grandson, Alex, living with him. When Alex proves to have a quirky sense of humor that matches Christa's, they imagine fantastic adventures until a real one—finding the stash of money Al Capone supposedly stored somewhere nearby—absorbs their attention. Could the money be enough to save the cabin? Tougas' first-person narration seems stiff at first, as Christa starts out as a whiny one-note character. Eventually, however, the characterization deepens as well as the intrigue, and the fast-paced ending has enough bite to satisfy. The premise will cause inevitable comparisons to Gennifer Choldenko’s Alcatraz tales, but the story stands on its own.
Entertaining and humorous; good light fare for middle graders . (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59643-990-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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by Peter Brown ; illustrated by Peter Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 2023
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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