It’s not enough that brilliant and beautiful Allegra “Legs” Hanover is infatuated with handsome, elusive, and seemingly unattainable oddball classmate and surfer Andros Bliss, but her long-time admirer and would-be boyfriend, nerdy Derman Bloom, has just slept with Legs’s best friend, Angie. Or has he? No one is really sure, and Time Zone High’s legendary Rules of Virginity aren’t much help. Slightly worse than her unrequited love and this recent betrayal is pending global calamity: A huge asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, expected to hit and destroy the world within hours. Legs wants to make the best of whatever time she has left, but Andros, enigmatic as ever and a surfer to the bone, is more interested in the last big wave the collision will cause. Strasser (who last visited this setting in Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date, 1996, etc.) has taken a serious notion—how to function in the face of disaster—and fashioned a riotously funny tale. In the face of recent end-of-the-world films, this novel looks almost masterful, with some weird and wonderful characters, side-splitting dialogue, suspense, and way more attitude than any old asteroid can diminish. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81113-6
Page Count: 169
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative.
Sylvie Jones is on her way to the Brindille School of Culinary Arts & Magic in this YA debut by a former Top Chef contestant.
Due to her mother’s alleged cheating years ago at the famed Golden Whisk—the biggest magical cooking competition around—Sylvie has been admitted only provisionally into Brindille’s six-week preparatory program. The Council of Culinary Sages has tasked her with proving her trustworthiness and talent by finishing first in her class. If Sylvie succeeds, she’ll be officially allowed to take the enrollment test. If she fails, she’ll be banned from “cooking up magic” altogether. Right before Sylvie arrives at Brindille, a mysterious stranger informs her that she’s part of a decades-old prophecy—her name is even written upon the Apple of Discord, a carefully guarded magical treasure borne by “a secret tree that only produce[s] fruit in times of great danger.” Now Sylvie is even more determined to succeed and clear her family’s name. While the overarching plot might hold the attention of ardent fans of magic school stories, the execution falls flat. Experienced genre readers will be disappointed to find that the narrative lacks depth and relies on cliched idioms and tired wordplay, and the culinary elements of the magical world are in need of more robust worldbuilding. Sylvie is cued white, and there’s diversity among the supporting characters.
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative. (recipes) (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798890033635
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A veteran high-school teacher cracks, holding his class at gunpoint on the last day of school in this drama-in-poetry from Glenn (Who Killed Mr. Chippendale?, 1996, etc.). Writing in conversational free-verse trains of thought, Glenn probes the hopes, fears, conceits, and moods of students, officials, and bystanders, introducing each of the hostages with a series of vignettes that trace the evolution of a particular idea or relationship through four years of school and to the beginning of class that fateful day. Fond of playing with language and irony—e.g., pairing poems in which the speakers express opposite views in nearly the same words—the author keeps the focus so firmly on individuals that the plot is really only a pretext for a series of earnest character portraits. From Morton Potter's determined assault on his weight problem to Denise Slattery cooing to her unborn child, readers will find plenty of familiar peer attitudes and situations with which to identify and to ponder. The teacher's own voice is heard in a handful of despondent poems: ``I speak./Who listens?/I teach./Who cares? . . . There's little I have done to make a difference.'' After the teacher's capture, police find a clipping in his pocket describing his 27-year-old son's apparent suicide by drowning. An arresting, if undeveloped, premise cements a gallery of recognizable high-school seniors fretting about—or blowing off—their pasts and futures. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-67548-5
Page Count: 183
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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