An inventive, funny, and multilayered adventure.
A middle school boy must solve the puzzle of why reality keeps getting rewritten in this novel.
The wave, as 12-year-old Billy Magnusson terms it, periodically hits him with a dizzying force, causing quaking that rattles “his bones” and a “jarring buzz in his ears.” Afterward, he finds that the world has changed in ways that only Billy remembers. Also dislocating are his family’s frequent moves; Billy’s father, a visionary inventor, works for the military. At his new school, Billy joins the Ascension Club, which is organized around a fascinating role-playing game. To Billy’s surprise, the club’s quirky members also remember changes after the wave, which they call the Mandela Effect since—it turns out—thousands of people remember a different outcome to the African statesman’s story. The surprises keep coming, as the wave brings Billy a brand new 8-year-old brother who’s being studied by a sinister government doctor. Further, it seems that a secret agency has been meddling with the Mandela Effect and, in the process, has erased a genius scientist from history. Now, with the help of his father, a game designer, a quantum computer, and a teleporter, Billy must set things right. Pacelli skillfully sets these remarkable events alongside the sometimes-melodramatic emotions and rivalries of middle school. While the science is complex and challenging, the story doesn’t forget its characters. These are well portrayed; for example, the Ascension Club members don’t fit into standard slots like nerd or jock, and adults aren’t clueless, as is often stereotypical in middle school novels. It’s somewhat problematic, though, that Billy’s avid interest in a pretty classmate often seems too advanced for a boy of 12: “She’d ruin his life if he let her.” That aside, the tale offers a fast-paced plot that’s absolutely bursting with ideas and will keep amazing readers.
An inventive, funny, and multilayered adventure.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Gypsy Shadow Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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