Fabulous fun.
Canine Arthur and feline Queenie narrate a high-stakes mystery in this second book of their eponymous middle-grade series.
Arthur and Queenie take the stage as dog and cat co-narrators of this funny, deftly plotted mystery. Arthur is a delightfully foggy dog with a big doggie heart—not keen on exercise but very keen on food. For her part, Queenie is the epitome of cat aloofness and self-love. Arthur and Queenie live at Blackberry Hill Inn in Vermont, with Mom and 11-year-old fraternal twins Harmony and Bro; they are as devoted to their humans as they are antipathetic to each other. The same morning mysterious woman Ms. Pryor checks into the inn, Sweet Lady Em, the neighbor’s famous-for-her-cream cow, goes missing, and Queenie, who gets a dish of cream each morning on her special saucer, is extremely unhappy about it. Then 11-year-old Jimmy Doone, Bro’s friend, is blamed for the cow’s going missing because, his father says, he didn’t lock the barn door, but Jimmy insists that he did. Later, Jimmy’s father is found seriously injured by a blow to the head, and why is Ms. Pryor nosing about Catastrophe Falls? The stakes ramp up considerably in this suspenseful and satisfyingly nuanced story. Arthur’s and Queenie’s hilarious personalities as they narrate in alternating chapters give the whole tale a refreshing spin. The people read as white default.
Fabulous fun. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-24580-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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