Offers ghoulish thrills and the promise of more adventures ahead.
Aided by her friends, 12-year-old Raven Gallows finds a mummy and attempts to solve a murder, which provides a lead for an investigation into her own mother’s death.
With their dad on an archaeological dig in Chile, Raven and her older sister, Annabel Lee, live and work with Grams and Aunt Lenore at the family’s funeral home. Recently, Raven’s best friend, Cosmina, received an unusual message from a spirit guide concerning Evangeline, Raven’s art historian mom who passed away years ago under mysterious circumstances. When the friends go to the renowned haunted hotel Moonrise Manor to communicate with Cosmina’s guide, Raven crashes into a wall, exposing a mummified body. The duo—plus new friend Miles and tech-savvy Eric—resolve to learn who murdered the man and enclosed him in the wall. The many Edgar Allan Poe references and quotes give this contemporary tale a gothic feel. As the characters race to expose the killer, the Ozarks setting of Sassafras Springs, Missouri, with its razor’s edge ridges, plays its own role in building the tension. Meanwhile, everything Raven uncovers during her investigation about art heists and a secret society convinces her that the mummy is somehow linked to her mother. Most main characters read white; Eric is cued Chinese American.
Offers ghoulish thrills and the promise of more adventures ahead. (discussion questions) (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781639933266
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings.
A loquacious, lovable dog narrates the challenges of shelter life as he longs for a home.
Friendly three-legged Chance is the perfect guide to Dogtown, a shelter that houses both warmblooded and robot dogs. In fact, she’s “Management’s lucky charm,” roaming freely without being confined to a cage and leaving kibble for her mouse friend. Life is pretty good. But she still yearns for reunification with her family and, like many of the living pups, harbors suspicion of her robot counterparts, who are convenient and more easily adoptable but lacking in personality. When Metal Head, an oddly engineered e-dog, bonds with a child during a shelter reading program, Chance’s assumptions about heartless robot dogs are upended. As Chance connects with Metal Head, the two make a brief escape into the wider world, and Chance learns a familiar lesson: Everyone longs for a place to belong. Memories of Chance’s happy home loom large in her mind: Easy days with the Bessers, a sweet Black family, were disrupted by a neglectful dogsitter, the accident that cost Chance her leg, and Chance’s flight in search of safety. Chance’s chatty narrative style includes flashbacks, vignettes about fellow shelter pets, and thoughtful observations, for example, about the “boohoos,” or sad new arrivals. The story offers many moments of laughter and reflection, all greatly enhanced by West’s utterly charming grayscale illustrations of irresistible pooches.
Eminently readable and appealing; will tug at dog-loving readers’ heartstrings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781250811608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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