Readers who sank their teeth into the first of the Lionboy trilogy will lick their chops over the second. With a short recap, the story immediately picks up the pell-mell pace as Charlie and the six escaped circus lions and one saber-toothed big cat travel by train to Venice to find his scientist parents, kidnapped for their asthma cure, and return the cats to their home in Essaouira (Africa). Abetted by a scruffy street cat, Sergei, Charlie’s ability to catspeak is the key device throughout the convoluted chases as the “tribe” survives a shipwreck, escapes from a Venetian palazzo, and is drugged. The saber tooth miraculously becomes the revered winged lion of St. Marks, deposing the doge, and reviving the city. Numerous villains impose constant dangers: the Corporacy that is taking over the world with genetically modified felines that make kids sick with asthma to sell medicine, the evil lionmaster, and the ruffian hired to abduct Charlie. Fast-paced cinematic action will leave readers panting for the next installment. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2984-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A shivery, ghostly mystery.
When looking for ghosts, be prepared for what you might find.
Josie and her best friends, Alison and Jackson, write “The Magnifiying Glass,” an investigative column for their school newspaper. It’s fine but not flashy enough to get them coveted editorial positions when they reach eighth grade next year. That’s how they find themselves on Halloween night with a plan to visit the local cemetery to find out whether the “super-famous ghost” known as the Lady in White is actually real—a topic that, if well executed, will make their column unforgettable. The three carefully plan a weekend unfettered by parental supervision in order to conduct their research. Their paranormal encounter begins with all three receiving unsettling, ominous text messages: “I’m watching” and “You have 2 days.” The haunting begins in earnest when the kids get home, intensifying from small, explainable things—dirt on the floor, a glitching computer—to clear signs that if the spirits aren’t put to rest, the consequences will be dire. Adults remain on the sidelines, raising the stakes and keeping the focus firmly on the relationship among the friends, which feels authentic. The scares feel real, and the central mystery becomes even more interesting from the elements that are rooted in reality and described in the author’s note, which includes photos. The three friends are coded white.
A shivery, ghostly mystery. (Supernatural. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593811634
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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