The air of strangeness hanging about a new classmate turns out to have just cause in this tale of a bookworm and a child cursed with a unique kind of second sight. “Cursed” is the right word, for not only can’t Imogen help seeing what’s in store for living people, but just touching a book, even a novel, makes her an unwilling participant in whatever terrors or tensions the story inside bears. Observing the reactions Imogen can’t quite conceal, Melanie gradually figures out her terrible secret and its cause—an odd necklace passed down to Imogen by her otherworldly mother. Though Imogen refuses to see it, whenever she takes the necklace off, she becomes a different person, gregarious and free. Melanie faces a tough decision: to keep her nose in her beloved books and out of what is, after all, not her business, or find a way to separate Imogen from the talisman and dispose of it? With some reluctance, Mel concocts a secret, clever plan, only to find in the suspenseful climax that the necklace has powerful defenses of its own that require some unexpected sacrifices to overcome. As in The Tulip Touch (1997), Fine has placed two young people with unusually complex motives and characters into a challenging, sometimes scary situation: readers will not be putting this one down until the last page. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32757-9
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato.
The new kid in school endures becoming the school mascot.
Ben Hardy has never cared for potatoes, and this distaste has become a barrier to adjusting to life in his new Idaho town. His school’s mascot is the Spud, and after a series of misfortunes, Ben is enlisted to don the potato costume and cheer on his school’s team. Ben balances his duties as a life-sized potato against his desperate desire to hide the fact that he’s the dork in the suit. After all, his cute new crush, Jayla, wouldn’t be too impressed to discover Ben’s secret. The ensuing novel is a fairly boilerplate middle–grade narrative: snarky tween protagonist, the crush that isn’t quite what she seems, and a pair of best friends that have more going on than our hero initially believes. The author keeps the novel moving quickly, pushing forward with witty asides and narrative momentum so fast that readers won’t really mind that the plot’s spine is one they’ve encountered many times before. Once finished, readers will feel little resonance and move on to the next book in their to-read piles, but in the moment the novel is pleasant enough. Ben, Jayla, and Ben’s friend Hunter are white while Ellie, Ben’s other good pal, is Latina.
On equal footing with a garden-variety potato. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11866-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy.
Inventively tweaking a popular premise, Jensen pits two Incredibles-style families with superpowers against each other—until a new challenge rises to unite them.
The Johnsons invariably spit at the mere mention of their hated rivals, the Baileys. Likewise, all Baileys habitually shake their fists when referring to the Johnsons. Having long looked forward to getting a superpower so that he too can battle his clan’s nemeses, Rafter Bailey is devastated when, instead of being able to fly or something else cool, he acquires the “power” to strike a match on soft polyester. But when hated classmate Juanita Johnson turns up newly endowed with a similarly bogus power and, against all family tradition, they compare notes, it becomes clear that something fishy is going on. Both families regard themselves as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Someone has been inciting them to fight each other. Worse yet, that someone has apparently developed a device that turns real superpowers into silly ones. Teaching themselves on the fly how to get past their prejudice and work together, Rafter, his little brother, Benny, and Juanita follow a well-laid-out chain of clues and deductions to the climactic discovery of a third, genuinely nefarious family, the Joneses, and a fiendishly clever scheme to dispose of all the Baileys and Johnsons at once. Can they carry the day?
A solid debut: fluent, funny and eminently sequel-worthy. (Adventure. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-220961-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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