Readers might wish for more Drog and less emotional turmoil, but a sturdy debut nonetheless.
The principles and practice of Aikido—and a talking sleeve puppet that won't let go of his hand—help a lad come to terms with suppressed anger over his parents' divorce.
Parker wrongly (or perhaps rightly) considers himself a "pretty happy, pretty ordinary kid" until the decrepit hand puppet he finds in a garbage can not only refuses to come off but delivers ill-tempered insults, often in the hearing of others. The refusal of his parents, his sixth-grade classmates and even his best friend Wren to believe that "Drog" has a mind of its own trigger outsized bursts of rage. Parker finds temporary peace in practicing the inner balance and (accurately presented, if a little too easily learned) harmonizing responses to attacks he picks up at a nearby school of Aikido. Eventually, though, he loses control of his temper and soundly thrashes a bully. Parker's shame ultimately leads to a breakthrough and better self-control. The puppet plays a secondary role to the martial art in resolving Parker's conflict, and though Cowing's efforts to keep who's really doing the talking ambiguous are too obvious, she engineers a cleverly credible way to separate boy and puppet at the end.
Readers might wish for more Drog and less emotional turmoil, but a sturdy debut nonetheless. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7613-6076-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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