Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.
A middle-grade fantasy about two boys who are separated from their parents during the reign of a petty despot.
In the Lands of Yonder is the town of Middlemost, where everyone is welcome. Adele and Kale Brandiwygn live there with their identical twin infants, Charles and James. They tell the kids apart by putting bracelets on them, labeled “C” and “J.” One day, Count Wilhelm Scream arrives in the Lands, declaring himself Supreme Ruler. He lives in Castle Mirkstone and dispatches a Special Police force to enslave anyone who disagrees with him. Naturally, the citizens of Middlemost try to resist the Count, and they hold secret meetings to strategize. The Brandiwygns host one such gathering; during it, the Special Police break in and haul the rebels toward wagons that will bring them to a prison on Mount Count. Other Middlemost folk, including Zach and Becky Zuckerman, watch in horror. Adele and Kale hurl their babies into the crowd before they’re captured, and the Zuckermans catch them. Twelve years later, Charles and James are now known as Casper and Jasper, and they live with the Zuckermans in Inglenook. Adele and Kale have been toiling away in separate camps, maintaining hope for the family’s reunion someday. The twins soon go on an adventure, battling various supernatural creatures along the way, to make that happen. In this darkly mirthful tale, Jacobs (Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café, 2015) embraces the difficult task of depicting a fascist society for a young audience. Many of her concepts—such as the textbook Adele must teach, Science and Other Lies—earn a laugh, but underneath it all is the idea that people like the Count can and do ruin real countries. However, the fact that the characters battle against him and his policies will remind readers that “the life of the mind confers a peculiar kind of liberty,” as the Brandiwygns learn in captivity. Jacobs’ prose is exceptionally bouncy in tone: “The boys were bright as comets and tough as tungsten.” Throughout, the twins’ fights with trolls and man-eating marshmallows, among other monsters, remain engaging.
Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949048-00-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Linden Tree Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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