Middle-grade readers in it for the story alone will gallop through this spellbinder; here’s hoping they go so fast the...
A fast-paced mystery finds Harry, an aspiring magician, and his friends on a quest to find Harry’s mentor, Herbie Lemster, who disappears from his dressing room backstage in a puff of purple smoke.
In this British import, Harry and Billie are street kids, while Arthur is the neglected son of a wealthy businessman who wants to send him away to a boarding school. It’s on Arthur’s birthday that Harry tries his most dangerous magic trick to date, and the three go out to celebrate, intending to wind up at the show in which Herbie performs. Their search begins right after Herbie disappears. The task is made difficult by Harry’s unfortunate habit of leaping into action, trusting that the other two will find him. And there are all too many sinister adults surrounding the three companions. The mystery does get solved, Harry learns a few things about friendship, and Arthur gives Harry his professional name of Houdini. Readers interested in actual information about Houdini should look elsewhere, as except for extremely broad background strokes, this character’s childhood has been entirely fictionalized. Most notably, this character has lived alone in New York after being sent by himself across the Atlantic, instead of spending his boyhood in Wisconsin in an intact family headed by his father, a rabbi.
Middle-grade readers in it for the story alone will gallop through this spellbinder; here’s hoping they go so fast the historical license doesn’t stick. (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4926-0332-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
PERSPECTIVES
It’s fine, but it doesn’t live up to its potential as a STEM-plus-caper adventure.
This thriller reads like Miss Congeniality meets Kingsman, starring Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Anishinaabe-kwe water protector Autumn Peltier…kind of.
Puerto Rican–born, Brooklyn-raised Sara isn’t expecting much from her court-appointed lawyer—she has no reason to put faith in the system that put her in jail after she hacked into the city’s computers to expose her foster parents as abusive frauds. But with juvie her only other prospect, Sara takes a leap and agrees to a wild proposition: She’ll join Britain’s MI6 as a kid operative. When she arrives at the covert facility in Scotland, she meets the other kids the MI6 agent, a white Englishman affectionately called Mother, has taken in—all of them, like Sara, have highly developed skills in logic, puzzles, sneakiness, and other useful spy tactics. Mother has a mission for them; he’s taking them to Paris to a competition for youth environmental innovation, where their job is to perform just well enough to make it into the top 10 so they can protect the eccentric billionaire sponsor of the contest from an imminent threat. It’s a fun romp with timely but superficial things to say about environmental activism, though the recruitment process and messy organization stretches the imagination even with a hardy suspension of disbelief. For a spy story, it’s surprisingly interior focused rather than action packed. The cast is technically diverse in ethnic background, but this has next to no influence on the characters.
It’s fine, but it doesn’t live up to its potential as a STEM-plus-caper adventure. (Thriller. 8-12)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1491-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
An intriguing mystery with a satisfying emotional payoff.
When Rafa Alvarez and his two best friends decide to bring their favorite role-playing game into the real world, the consequences become just as real.
Between his father’s strict nature and his mother’s worsening illness, Cuban American Rafa has retreated into playing The Forgotten Age with Beto and Yesi. However, after they attempt to steal a slushie machine from the school cafeteria as part of the game, Dad decides Rafa would best learn his lesson by spending a month on a ranch…all the way across the country from Florida in New Mexico. When Rafa arrives at Rancho Espanto, or Terror Ranch, he forms new friendships with Korean American Jennie Kim, the librarian’s daughter, and Black barn manager Marcus Coleman, an army veteran. But when a strange man in a green sweater begins to appear, causing chaos for Rafa, the seemingly sedate ranch becomes the site of an exciting—and slightly terrifying—mystery to solve. Together, Rafa and Jennie work to uncover the strange (possibly paranormal) happenings at Rancho Espanto. While the mystery lies at the core of this novel, the exploration of themes of loss, grief, and identity add complexity. Readers familiar with these subjects will see themselves in Rafa as he struggles to come to terms with and understand his mother’s condition and build his own identity.
An intriguing mystery with a satisfying emotional payoff. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780374390433
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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