This gentle, lightly magical story leans on the comfort of familiarity over novelty.
This first installment in a Heidi Heckelbeck series spinoff stars Heidi’s younger brother.
Henry Heckelbeck’s perfectly fine with being an ordinary person, unlike his female witch relatives. A kid focused on saving time, Henry’s excited about being prepared for another year at school. For their first assignment, Henry and his classmates must make All About Me bags containing three items that reveal things about them. While trying to get his remote-controlled toy dragon off the shelf to complete his bag, Henry stumbles upon a mysterious old book containing both a medal and a personal dragon spell. When putting on the medal and chanting the spell unexpectedly brings his toy dragon to life, Henry must catch his dragon and keep the magical mischief under wraps. A secondary character named Mackenzie “Max” Maplethorpe (in case readers miss it, Henry makes the connection between Max and Heidi’s classmate Melanie Maplethorpe) is a particularly observant threat to Henry’s new, magical secret. Although the broad strokes of setup and plotline are beyond familiar, Henry’s character—high energy and believably quirky—makes up for a lot. Aside from the story, the familiar format’s large print with easy words and frequent picture breaks results in an unintimidating book for emergent independent readers. The illustrations—black line art on white page—generally lack racial cues, though on the cover Henry is depicted with light skin.
This gentle, lightly magical story leans on the comfort of familiarity over novelty. (Fantasy. 5-9)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6104-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre.
Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.
The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35393-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
First of a tasty if not immediately nourishing new series.
When Dr. Bunsen, Gabe, Laura, and Cesar's mad-scientist neighbor, tries out his growth machine on Gabe's plastic animal toys, there's an unexpected result—they come to life.
Second-grade whiz kids Gabriel Martinez, Laura Reyes, and Cesar Moreno meet their strange neighbor while fundraising for a science-club field trip. Known to their classmates as “the Data Set,” they each have individual passions: Gabe loves animals; Laura loves to tinker and invent; Cesar loves to read and eat. There’s room for all these activities in their well-equipped treehouse. Together, their fantastic adventures will be the stuff of four titles scheduled for 2016 and aimed directly at first- and second-graders already devouring books. This episode introduces the characters, sets up the problem (the cute but rapidly growing baby animals), and finds a solution (sneak them into the zoo) in 126 fast-paced pages written with plenty of dialogue and copiously illustrated with appealing drawings. With these Latino protagonists—Cesar has dark skin and curly hair, while Laura and Gabe have lighter skin and straight hair—and a STEM-infused plot, this would seem to have been made to order for today’s elementary school students. While the emphasis is far more on plot than STEM, the kid-friendly fantasy should captivate readers, who will certainly want to gobble up the next installment. (Tantalizingly, the opening pages are included.)
First of a tasty if not immediately nourishing new series. (Adventure. 5-8)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5729-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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