This historical hodgepodge begs the question, what is this book really about? (Historical adventure. 10-14)
What happens when a small group of misfits collide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the day Pearl Harbor is attacked? They stumble haphazardly into an Arthurian mystery that has Nazi ties, and it is somehow up to them to save New York from a Nazi terrorist attack, of course.
The four kids are a young white orphan, Madge; Kiku, daughter of a Japanese museum curator; Joe, a Mohawk boarding school runaway; and Walt, a white Jewish boy sent to New York from Germany to escape the concentration camps. These four come together to solve a mystery to decode the stolen Kelmsbury, an ancient manuscript. The new friends have had a shared dream of a mysterious man in a trench coat, and they suspect it signals a magical link that ties them to the King Arthur legend. There is a lot going on in this far-fetched tale that reads like an adolescent version of The DaVinci Code, and credulity needs to stretch to accommodate it, as the author leaves it to this arbitrary bunch to run around the Met in search of clues amid an underworld of adult spies during wartime. Contemporary young readers may wish for a primer to sort through the inundation of historical references, be it to the World War II era or ancient Britain. As the text also name-checks Boris Karloff, Joan Fontaine, and the Queen of Sheba, among others, with a little dash of Mohawk language tossed in, readers will need to be either very flexible or ready to look up what they don’t know.
This historical hodgepodge begs the question, what is this book really about? (Historical adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-99766-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense.
In the midst of political turmoil, how do you escape the only country that you’ve ever known and navigate a new life? Parallel stories of three different middle school–aged refugees—Josef from Nazi Germany in 1938, Isabel from 1994 Cuba, and Mahmoud from 2015 Aleppo—eventually intertwine for maximum impact.
Three countries, three time periods, three brave protagonists. Yet these three refugee odysseys have so much in common. Each traverses a landscape ruled by a dictator and must balance freedom, family, and responsibility. Each initially leaves by boat, struggles between visibility and invisibility, copes with repeated obstacles and heart-wrenching loss, and gains resilience in the process. Each third-person narrative offers an accessible look at migration under duress, in which the behavior of familiar adults changes unpredictably, strangers exploit the vulnerabilities of transients, and circumstances seem driven by random luck. Mahmoud eventually concludes that visibility is best: “See us….Hear us. Help us.” With this book, Gratz accomplishes a feat that is nothing short of brilliant, offering a skillfully wrought narrative laced with global and intergenerational reverberations that signal hope for the future. Excellent for older middle grade and above in classrooms, book groups, and/or communities looking to increase empathy for new and existing arrivals from afar.
Poignant, respectful, and historically accurate while pulsating with emotional turmoil, adventure, and suspense. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-88083-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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