A powerful tale of a future to be avoided.
A cautionary tale about the perils of humanity’s large ecological footprint.
Eleven-year-old brown-skinned, “wild”-haired Kiri inhabits an ecologically damaged world. She lives on the edge of a swamp with her conservationist father, a white man named Martin, outside the fugee village. While collecting samples for him on the beach, she sees the villagers pull out a magnificent leatherback turtle, a “once-were creature” thought to be extinct, but she and Martin are unable to prevent its slaughter. After a fight breaks out between Martin and a villager, they are told to not intervene in fugee affairs because they are wallers—those who fled ecological damage to live in walled cities. When a panther Martin tracks later on dies, Kiri vows to somehow protect its cubs. But when Kiri falls ill, she must be treated at the waller city. Price of admission: three panther cubs. Can Kiri save the panther cubs so they can be returned to the wild and also help the fugee villagers and her father come together for the good of all? An author’s note discusses the critical endangerment of Florida panthers and leatherback turtles and invites readers to join in creating a more sustainable world. The religious beliefs of the fugees, a multiethnic population, include a practice similar to Day of the Dead and a belief in spirits called “devis.”
A powerful tale of a future to be avoided. (Science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-55558-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Star-quality co-authors will (as with the previous episodes) ensure good sales, but the broad gap between the ingenuous...
George and his impulsive friend Annie, both white, take more trips into space to save the Earth from a madman with a supercomputer.
As in the Hawkings’ three previous books about George (George’s Secret Key to the Universe, 2012, etc.), the plot is a flimsy vehicle for a series of mind-expanding infodumps, either inserted into the narrative or interleaved in a (much) smaller font. As an outbreak of computer hacking plunges the world into riot and chaos—the work, it eventually turns out, of a particularly silly onesie-wearing villain with a quantum computer—George, Annie, and readers with sufficient attention spans are filled in on topics of radically varying density. These range from ciphers, algorithms, internet safety, and why the moon has a “dark side” to the operation of a “universal” Turing Machine, the present and future of robotics, 3-D printing, the habitability of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Boltzmann Brains, and DNA. Stephen Hawking closes with a long speculative essay on life elsewhere in the universe that includes his proposal, recently in the news, to send machines to other solar systems. Aside from Annie’s dyslexia, the authors make no effort to diversify the cast, nor does Parsons in his frequent cartoon vignettes.
Star-quality co-authors will (as with the previous episodes) ensure good sales, but the broad gap between the ingenuous storyline and challenging informational content will frustrate some young readers and bore the rest. (Informational science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6627-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An average mystery with the added spice of danger and an engaging depiction of a distinctive and wondrous place.
Buck Bray is about to become the star of his own new nature series, with the first episode set in Denali National Park in Alaska.
His father is in charge, Shoop is the cameraman, and Shoop’s adopted Asian daughter, Toni, is to be the “gofer.” Buck, an intrepid white 11-year-old, has a gift for getting into trying situations, like ending up (with Toni) too close to a grizzly bear. Through their own astute powers of observation and innate curiosity, Toni and Buck discover—then run afoul of—a grizzly-cub kidnapping trio. Why the criminals choose to commit the crime in the well-patrolled national park instead of almost anywhere else or even what their motivation for wanting the cubs might be are just two of the many unconvincing premises upon which the narrative dangerously teeters. Although plenty of interesting animal information is included, it doesn’t fully make up for clunky exposition and a predictable if improbable plot. Buck and Toni are likable enough, and their enthusiasm for the park is amply displayed. Along with the details of film production that are included and an exciting (if not especially plausible) climax, these qualities may be enough to sustain reader interest.
An average mystery with the added spice of danger and an engaging depiction of a distinctive and wondrous place. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58536-970-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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