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REBEL

Amanda Jane has been called Rebel since she was two. At 14 (and nearly six feet tall), she’s delighted to spend part of her summer in Seattle helping her unconventional Gram ready an old Victorian house for college-age boarders. Gram’s friend and partner in homesteading is Vi, who has brought along her grandson. He’s not only Rebel’s age, he’s 6 foot 6 and named Moses. Moses’s video camera captures a robbery-in-progress at the local deli, and that sparks a series of events involving counterfeit money and Moses’s Irish wolfhound. Showing the rooms between bouts of housepainting enables Rebel and Moses to trace who the perps might be, and Rebel’s independent streak keeps the more sensible Moses from calling the police until it is almost too late. Rebel is clearly checking Moses out in a big way, and their byplay is rather more interesting than the contrived plotline. The possibility of a European tour with both grandmothers and the teen duo leave readers open for sequels. (Fiction. 10-13)

Pub Date: July 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-689-85073-5

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003

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THE SCREAMING STAIRCASE

From the Lockwood & Co. series , Vol. 1

A heartily satisfying string of entertaining near-catastrophes, replete with narrow squeaks and spectral howls.

Three young ghost trappers take on deadly wraiths and solve an old murder case in the bargain to kick off Stroud’s new post-Bartimaeus series.

Narrator Lucy Carlyle hopes to put her unusual sensitivity to supernatural sounds to good use by joining Lockwood & Co.—one of several firms that have risen to cope with the serious ghost Problem that has afflicted England in recent years. As its third member, she teams with glib, ambitious Anthony Lockwood and slovenly-but-capable scholar George Cubbins to entrap malign spirits for hire. The work is fraught with peril, not only because a ghost’s merest touch is generally fatal, but also, as it turns out, as none of the three is particularly good at careful planning and preparation. All are, however, resourceful and quick on their feet, which stands them in good stead when they inadvertently set fire to a house while discovering a murder victim’s desiccated corpse. It comes in handy again when they later rashly agree to clear Combe Carey Hall, renowned for centuries of sudden deaths and regarded as one of England’s most haunted manors. Despite being well-stocked with scream-worthy ghastlies, this lively opener makes a light alternative for readers who find the likes of Joseph Delaney’s Last Apprentice series too grim and creepy for comfort.

A heartily satisfying string of entertaining near-catastrophes, replete with narrow squeaks and spectral howls. (Ghost adventure. 11-13)

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4231-6491-3

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

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VACANCY

Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest.

Does anyone who volunteers to spend a night in a derelict haunted hotel on a dare deserve what they get?

“The hotel is hungry. And we aren’t leaving here until it’s fed.” In what reads like a determined effort to check off every trope of the genre, Alexander sends new arrival Jasmine, along with two friends and several dozen other classmates, to the long-abandoned Carlisle Hotel for the annual seventh grade Dare—touching off a night of terror presided over by the leering, autocratic Grand Dame and complete with sudden gusts and blackouts, spectral visions, evil reflections in mirrors, skeletons, a giant spider, gravity reversals, tides of oily black sludge sucking screaming middle schoolers down the drain, and so much more. (No gore, though, aside from a few perfunctory drops of blood from one small scratch.) The author saves a twist for the end, and as inducement to read alone or aloud in the dark by flashlight, both his language and the typography crank up the melodrama: “He walks toward us, past the mirror, and I see it— / a pale white face in the reflection, / a gaunt, skeletal grimace, / with sharpened teeth / and hollow black eyes, staring at him / with its mouth / wide / open / in a scream….” Jasmine presents White; her closest friends are Rohan, whose name cues him as South Asian, and Mira, who has dark skin.

Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest. (Horror. 10-13)

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-338-70215-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021

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