Readers who can get past the tonal quibbles will appreciate seeing how this class geek discovers that some of his brainy...
A bomb threat leads to early school dismissal and leaves Stephen entangled in intrigue.
Stephen likes to count his mistakes and has a tendency to read too much into things. These qualities don’t make him a favorite of his grade-seven classmates, but they do make him especially fit to solve a crime involving a rogue Volkswagen Beetle and a bomb threat. Additionally, Stephen has just been entrusted with his first dog-walking job. The boisterous dogs, Ping and Pong, are mismatched in size, hard to control, and irresistible. When Stephen is an unwitting witness to a serious incident, the dogs become a target of threats. Stephen begrudgingly allows his classmate Renée, the only other student as brainy and perhaps less popular than he, to assist him in figuring out the culprit and protecting the pups. Counting his mistakes throughout the day as a kind of deductive reasoning, Stephen gradually arrives at the culprit from among the likely suspects of the all-white cast of characters. Stephen is a slightly older Encyclopedia Brown plunked into a modern-day, unsavory scenario. The school violence is treated oddly lightly, so the balance of tone versus content is off-kilter. The descriptions of canine exuberance, however, are delightful and the best parts of this quick read and first in a promised mystery series.
Readers who can get past the tonal quibbles will appreciate seeing how this class geek discovers that some of his brainy quirks make him a fine budding sleuth. (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4597-3625-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In the wake of a destructive dustup with ghosts in the surprisingly rich rare-book room of their suburban public library,...
Young ghost hunters barely start their search for a magical artifact in this fragmentary series opener.
In the wake of a destructive dustup with ghosts in the surprisingly rich rare-book room of their suburban public library, classmates Jay, Pam, Danni and Brian find themselves in a race with shadowy but plainly evil opponents. Their mutual goal is to track down a crystal that can summon and control the spirits of the dead. First, though, they have to secure a certain Key by puzzling out cryptic rhymes that lead in apparently arbitrary fashion to grave markers, nearby crop circles and a local medium. A climactic spectral attack adds a bit of drama, though it leaves the quartet at the end no closer to the Key—much less the sub-titular glass. Along with page images of stodgy background from an “Encyclopedia of the Paranormal” (evidently a fictional one, not to be confused with the two actual reference sources bearing that title), some illustrations look blank until a small, included (and easily lost) square of lenticular plastic is laid over to reveal hidden messages or pictures.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-934734-48-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Seven Footer Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Action and enthusiasm aplenty, but, like most time-travel tales, not much for internal logic.
A Back to the Future–style romp through time, though with more loose ends than a bowl of spaghetti.
Hardly have teen twins Kyle and Emma and their younger brother (and narrator) Max arrived for a stay at their reclusive grandfather’s Texas ranch than the old man announces that he’s about to have a massive heart attack, shows them a working time machine in the basement and sends them out to a nearby paleontological site where they find fossilized sneaker prints among the dinosaur tracks. Then a stranger grabs Emma and vanishes in a flash of light—leaving the remaining sibs and a ranch hand’s bow-wielding daughter Petra to zoom in a Volkswagen Beetle back 70 million–plus years to the rescue. Not only does the late Cretaceous landscape turn out to be well stocked with crocodilian Deinosuchus and other toothy predators, a human gent falsely (as it turns out) claiming to be a refugee from 1919 steps out of the bushes to guide the others to the evidently dino-proof frame house in which Emma is being held. Everyone steams back to the present on the kidnapper’s motor launch, which is also fitted out as a time machine. Showing blithe disregard for potential paradoxes, the author sheds enough light on his byzantine back story to ensure that the protagonists will be taking more trips through time and closes with notes on dinosaurs and on the history of “Robinsonades.”
Action and enthusiasm aplenty, but, like most time-travel tales, not much for internal logic. (recommended reading) (Science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-60849-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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