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The Great Snapping Turtle Adventure

A MYSTERY STORY FOR YOUNG TEENS

The author’s intended audience of young teenagers may really like this book—and also fall in love with its setting.

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This short “mystery story for young teens” is a love letter to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as seen through the eyes of two young boys and their stepfather.

Yaruta-Young’s (Many Happy Returns?, 2014) family goes back generations on the Eastern Shore. It’s one of those special places, like New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, that produce more mystery and quirkiness than locals can consume, so it has to be exported in books like this one. Max and his little brother, Charles, and their stepfather, Fred, are off for a guys’ weekend of crabbing. They’re a likable trio, and the first thing they come upon, in the middle of the oyster-shell road to Ellis Island, is an old lady holding a big snapping turtle by the tail. The mysterious Hattie Harriston pretty much forces the turtle on Fred and the boys in an effort to make sure that the creature gets to a place to lay her eggs. The group also discovers a graveyard that surprisingly contains a tombstone for Hattie Harriston. After a day’s successful crabbing, Fred and the boys head to the town of Vienna and check into the old Vienna Inn for the night. More memorable characters bob up, namely Miss Marie, the proprietor, and Miss Ruby, whose legendary restaurant is known only to the locals. (To say that these people are insular would be an understatement, but Fred has some local family ties.) A mystery needs a ghost story, and later that night Miss Marie (and Yaruta-Young) tell a doozy, involving young lovers eloping, haunting, and violent death—all connected to the Vienna Inn. Readers learn more crucial facts about Hattie Harriston, and about what finally happens to the snapping turtle; suffice it to say that the conclusion is tidy. One major strength of the book is its inclusion of details about such things as how to fish for crabs (“First you need to get one of those baskets—one that has an inner tube around it”) or a visit to the button factory, where workers make oyster-shell buttons for high-end fashions. Yaruta-Young tells a good story, and the descriptions of the Eastern Shore steal every scene.

The author’s intended audience of young teenagers may really like this book—and also fall in love with its setting.

Pub Date: July 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-9909380-5-7

Page Count: 154

Publisher: Secant Publishing

Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015

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PEMMICAN WARS

A GIRL CALLED ECHO, VOL. I

A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.

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In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.

Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.

A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.

Pub Date: March 15, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7

Page Count: 48

Publisher: HighWater Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018

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THE DA VINCI CODE

Bulky, balky, talky.

In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.

But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.

Bulky, balky, talky.

Pub Date: March 18, 2003

ISBN: 0-385-50420-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003

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