An 11-year-old's reputation for wild stories comes back to haunt him when he's sole witness to a kidnapping but can't get anyone to take him seriously. After seeing classmate Willie Groves pulled into a car outside their exclusive private school, Joey beats his head against a wall of adult disbelief for hours; Ernie the chauffeur laughs it off, his family is skeptical, he gets a lecture about playing pranks from the 911 operator, and when he finally badgers his parents into calling the Groves, they reach a maid taking messages. Joey passes a restless night, his vivid imagination working overtime on what Willie must be going through. When police show up the next day, he's vindicated, but a new and more pressing worry intrudes after first a cab, and then the kidnap car nearly run him down. Roberts (Twisted Summer, 1996, etc.) cranks up the suspense, delivering several ingenious twists in the process; as it turns out, the crooks are hiding in Joey's apartment building, and after a surprise meeting in the elevator Joey finds himself locked up with an unharmed and bored Willie. Readers will feel Joey's fear and frustration keenly in this expertly done page-turner. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81394-5
Page Count: 137
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride.
Disaster overtakes a group of sixth graders on a leadership-building white-water rafting trip.
Deep in the Montana wilderness, a dam breaks, and the resultant rush sweeps away both counselors, the rafts, and nearly all the supplies, leaving five disparate preteens stranded in the wilderness far from where they were expected to be. Narrator Daniel is a mild White kid who’s resourceful and good at keeping the peace but given to worrying over his mentally ill father. Deke, also White, is a determined bully, unwilling to work with and relentlessly taunting the others, especially Mia, a Latina, who is a natural leader with a plan. Tony, another White boy, is something of a friendly follower and, unfortunately, attaches himself to Deke while Imani, a reserved African American girl, initially keeps her distance. After the disaster, Deke steals the backpack with the remaining food and runs off with Tony, and the other three resolve to do whatever it takes to get it back, eventually having to confront the dangerous bully. The characters come from a variety of backgrounds but are fairly broadly drawn; still, their breathlessly perilous situation keeps the tale moving briskly forward, with one threatening situation after another believably confronting them. As he did with Wildfire (2019), Newbery Honoree Philbrick has crafted another action tale for young readers that’s impossible to put down.
Readers will need to strap on their helmets and prepare for a wild ride. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64727-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
A tasty appetizer, with every sign of further courses to come.
With gleeful panache, Springer introduces an innocent but capable young sleuth—the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, no less—and takes her from wild English countryside to the soupy filth of Victorian London.
Having led a free-spirited but cloistered life on the ancestral country estate, 14-year-old Enola Holmes is thrown for a loop by her mother’s sudden disappearance—not to mention the subsequent arrival of her long-absent big brothers, both of whom turn out to be overbearing and dismissive of women. Rather than meekly knuckle under, though, Enola makes careful preparation (she thinks) and slips off to track her wayward parent down. On the way, she falls into the furor surrounding an apparent kidnapping (see title)—and then, barely does she arrive in the big city before some authentically scary ruffians snatch her, too. Naïve but a quick study, and more resourceful than even her renowned siblings, Enola resolutely surmounts each challenge that comes her way. By the end, she has rescued the spoiled young aristocrat, eluded her brothers, gotten a lead on her mother thanks to a series of cleverly coded messages and even set herself up as a “Perditorian”—a finder of lost things and people. A tasty appetizer, with every sign of further courses to come. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24304-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Sleuth/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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