LIONBOY: THE CHASE

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)