An inventive, heartwarming first book in a new middle-grade series.
An adventure to a world where lost things—and people—live on.
Cousins Jake and Marisol grew up listening to their late Nana’s exciting tales of adventures whenever the family got together at her house in South Carolina. This summer marks the time to say goodbye, as the house needs to be sold, but Marisol is not ready to move on yet. Finding one of Nana’s old maps is just the excuse for one last adventure. The duo accidentally slips into the World Between Blinks, a place where anything lost in our world—from historical figures like Amelia Earhart to lost cities, extinct animals, and everyday mislaid objects—ends up. Jake and Marisol must find their way back before they start forgetting their own memories and become lost there forever. Chapters alternate between Jake’s and Marisol’s points of view in a novel that beautifully delves into each cousin’s inner turmoil: Marisol struggles with the grief of losing not only Nana, but the house where so many memories were built while Jake feels he has sadly grown used to constantly saying goodbye due to having a traveling diplomat mother. The authors deftly weave those elements into an enduring tale of love, loss, and memory. Jake is White and American; Marisol lives in La Paz with her Bolivian father and her mother, who is Jake’s mother’s identical twin.
An inventive, heartwarming first book in a new middle-grade series. (glossary of historical figures and places) (Fantasy. 9-14)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-288224-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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