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Hunt for the Sun Children

In the crowded teens-with-powers genre, this debut sails above the rest.

Awards & Accolades

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In this YA debut, teens with elemental powers train to battle monsters in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The world has been reduced to glass craters and tumbled ruins by the Burning. In scattered villages, survivors of the Confederacy send gifted children to Redbridge Academy, where they learn to harness the elements: water, earth, fire, and wind. Rayne is from Bluffstown, a coastal community. She and best friend Jules begin three years of training to become Guardians, who fight (and often die) against monsters in the Ziera Mountains. Reaching the academy, Rayne chooses to learn water casting, while Jules chooses fire. The teens also find romance at Redbridge; Jules dates Kiki, and Rayne meets Jay, who cares for the injured in the Mendery. When Rayne’s friend Cascade is hurt, she intuitively heals the girl with flesh casting. Jay tells Rayne to hide the ability, otherwise the school Masters will make her a permanent resident of Healersbay against her will. Jay also hints at a conspiracy, led by Grand Master Efthalia, to find two casters who can manipulate light and shadow—the sun children. These powerful individuals have the potential to destroy the world, much like it was during the Burning. Debut author Iverson combines motifs from Avatar: The Last Airbender and the X-Men comics for an exhilarating read that has no shortage of hairpin twists. As the cast swells with students and teachers, Iverson maintains everyone’s unique value to the plot, thereby performing some excellent sleight of hand as readers learn more about the sun children. The magic of casting is well-grounded in mortal drama, since “Your casting is fueled by your body, and your body is a finite resource.” The fights are enthralling, too, as when a sun child uses “the shadows that played across every crease of my uniform and every contour of my body.” The only drawback, if there is one, is the narrative’s familiar YA structure: sequels and school years are set up to proceed apace. Yet Iverson’s inventive plotting makes any direction seem possible.

In the crowded teens-with-powers genre, this debut sails above the rest.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015

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WRECKING BALL

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.

The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.

When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Amulet/Abrams

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK'S CHRISTMAS

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...

The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.

The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3

Page Count: 24

Publisher: HMH Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

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