An imaginative, humorous book with a strong emotional foundation.
A magical helper comes to the aid of a worried young boy in this chapter book.
There’s a bond between young kuzoolies—magical, human-sized fairylike creatures with wings—and children. Only kids can see them, and even then, only the kuzoolies who aren’t fully grown. Feyi Fay is a young blue-winged kuzooly with chocolate-colored skin and coffee-colored eyes. Via a magical phone app that only kids know about, Feyi learns that a boy in London needs her help. Tom, about 6, has messy blond hair and a problem. He’s heard from his friend Tunde that a Madam Koi Koi (named for the sound she makes when walking) takes kids away who open their eyes after going to bed. Now he can’t sleep, and he hears noises from the living room. This must mean that “Madam Koi Koi is talking to my mom and they are plotting to take away my ice cream...forever!” As evidence, a strange pair of red high heels can be seen under the crack in the bedroom door—shoes that make the sound “Koi Koi Koi.” If Tom will be brave and ask his mother, Feyi can protect them from Madam Koi Koi with various magical objects manifested through a special cowry bead. After a series of amusing misadventures, Tom and Feyi learn the truth about the red-shoes–wearing woman and a lesson about the protectiveness of mothers. In her debut book, Brownstone inserts a Nigerian boarding school legend about a ghostly high-heeled teacher within her own original creation about African fairies. These fairies are refreshing, given the superabundance of white-skinned fairies in children’s books. Tom’s fears are taken seriously but contrasted with Feyi’s lighthearted confidence and the charm of magic. His anxieties find deeper reassurance, though, in his mother’s realism and strength: “No madam is taking you away from me. No sir. Not on my watch.” The illustrations, too, are entertainingly lively. It’s an effective, well-balanced mix, likely to win readers for the next planned volume in this series. Discussion questions and further links are provided.
An imaginative, humorous book with a strong emotional foundation.Pub Date: July 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73223-150-4
Page Count: 101
Publisher: Teni and Tayo Creations LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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