A sequel to the The Egypt Game (1967) again features April and Melanie, who have a club with four other children of different ages. Despite the 30 years since the publication of the first book, there is no time gap in the story: The six have decided to learn all about gypsies, meeting in their fenced-in hideaway and adopting a dog along the way. When Toby disappears, tough-talking adults press the children for information, and an atmosphere of unease and anxiety permeates the latter half of the story. A child custody issue turns out to be the impetus for Toby's running away, accompanied by farfetched threats of blackmail by Toby's wealthy grandparents. The book is more concentrated on plot than on characterization, with cliffhanger chapter endings and suspense; the girls (and the book jacket) are more modern and the vocabulary less demanding than in the first book. Consigning it to sequel status is April's recollection, unexplained, of "what had almost happened" to her in The Egypt Game (she was almost killed by a "criminally insane murderer of children," to quote the Kirkus review). Put down one book and pick up the other, and this new story works. Otherwise, the dubiousness of kids of varying ages playing together and dearth of helpful background relegate this to a just-average mystery. (Fiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-32266-6
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power.
Will 12-year-old Nura be able to outsmart the trickster jinn and save herself and her friends?
Nura lives in the fictional Pakistani town of Meerabagh, where she has worked mining mica to help support her family of five—her mother, herself, and her three younger siblings—since her father’s death. In the mines she has the company of her best friend, Faisal, who is teased by other kids for his stutter, and she enjoys small pleasures like splurging on gulab jamun. Although Maa wants Nura to stop working and attend school, she has no interest in classroom learning and hopes to save up to send her younger siblings to school instead so they can break the family’s cycle of poverty. Following a mining accident in which Faisal and others are lost in the rubble, Nura goes to the rescue. In her quest, she is plunged into the magical, glittering jinn realm, where nothing is as it seems. The author seamlessly weaves into the worldbuilding of the story commentary on real-life problems such as the ravages of child labor and systems that perpetuate inequities. An informative author’s note further explores present-day global cycles of oppression as well as the life-changing power of education. This action-packed story set in a Muslim community moves at a fast pace, with evocative writing that brings the fantasy world to life and lyrical imagery to describe emotions.
An enthralling fantasy debut exploring exploitation by those in power. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5795-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Sweetly magical.
Seven-year-old Grace knows a great many words, but she can’t bring herself to string them together on paper.
In her eyes, this gift is unique to her writer aunt, Lily, with whom she spends her afternoons. Lily, however, has found herself bereft of ideas, and out of desperation she puts out an ad for a writing assistant. Enter Rex: a dog whose apparent oddities cleverly conceal a magic that, while unexplained, is quietly remarkable. Rex inspires Lily almost immediately, and the two find happiness in their new partnership. Similarly, Rex inspires Grace to turn her words into stories. Her reservations will feel familiar to any fledgling pen-pusher: not knowing how to write what she feels, how to start, or how to press on. Those reservations extend into her everyday life, as it fills and changes in ways she never foresaw, but her small network—loving (if busy and often absent) parents, the wondrous Rex, Lily and her writing group, the encouraging teacher Ms. Luce, and steadfast, unflappable Daniel, Grace’s best friend—remains by her side throughout her writer’s journey. MacLachlan spins from simple words an enigmatic, gentle, but perhaps too succinct tale. While Grace’s first-person narration doesn’t quite ring true to her young age, (a lack of contractions makes the prose oddly formal), charmingly scratchy pencil sketches scattered throughout mitigate this alienating effect. The only physical descriptions to be found are attached to the animal characters.
Sweetly magical. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294098-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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