by Sonia Gensler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2015
Frightening and engrossing.
A preteen girl and her newfound friend investigate paranormal activity on her grandmother's farm.
For Avery, summers on her grandmother's backwater farm have always meant long days filled with make-believe and storytelling. When her older brother, Blake, starts this summer break refusing to play with her, Avery wanders off to pout. She bumps into Julian, a city boy whose famous dad is staying in one of her grandmother's cabins. Julian's zeal for filmmaking catches Avery's fancy, and soon they develop a short film centering around the haunted Hillard Mansion, which Avery is forbidden to enter. The ensuing frights are a delight for readers aging out of junior horror and looking for some thematic meat in their reading. Gensler neatly captures a setting that has real history behind it instead of a stage-bound backdrop. Also well-developed is Avery's tween-ness, a tricky age when the world seems so big and so open that real terrors are replacing the figures of nightmares. The author's primary interest is in Avery's relationships with her mother and grandmother. This component is refreshing, but unfortunately it throws less well-developed relationships into relief. Julian and his family in particular feel like something of an afterthought. A late-in-the-game reveal works well enough when thematically linked to the novel's supernatural element, but it’s not enough to make these characters spring to life. Better handled are the novel's terror sequences, which are spaced out a bit but still satisfyingly unnerving.
Frightening and engrossing. (Horror. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-52214-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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by Alan Gratz ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2017
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
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New York Times Bestseller
Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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by Dav Pilkey ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2013
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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