A rollicking adventure.
An unwitting Indiana 13-year-old contends with a magical Mastermind.
Mason Mortimer Morrison ranks No. 1 on Magix’s Most Wanted List—but has no idea why! Since his dad was incarcerated for a bank robbery, life has gone downhill: Mom’s always working, school’s a drag, and nobody but Hamid, a 10-year-old neighbor, wants to hang out. Everything changes when a magical music box interrupts a catastrophic book report and two agents from Magix’s Investigation Division take Mason into custody. Mason, they claim, is an Ed—an Educated person who understands how magic functions—while most people are blissfully unaware Igs, or Ignorants. Magic manifests in boons, once-ordinary objects imbued with power by good deeds—and Mason stands accused of pillaging a boon storage facility. Before Magix enacts a harsh sentence, Mason’s sprung from their clutches by the mysterious Avery, who claims she’s an apprentice detective, and the two begin working to prove his innocence. As they gather evidence, an unknown Mastermind begins interfering with their efforts—and seems to predict their every move. Can Mason and Avery sway Magix, or will the Mastermind’s plan prevail? Whitesides’ latest relies on nippy prose, lighthearted stakes, physical comedy, and thriller pacing to bring a large, inscrutable, sequel-begging bureaucracy to life. Mason seems to be White; Avery is cued as Black, and black-haired Hamid’s family emigrated from England.
A rollicking adventure. (Fantasy adventure. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-256837-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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