Definitely buzzworthy.
A 12-year-old fugitive starts middle school with a literally electrifying secret to keep.
After eight years of home schooling and sudden flights with his fanatically cautious mother, frustrated Trex jumps at the chance to be a “normal” kid for once—a tall order, as his whole body functions as a capacitor to power the experimental bioware in his brain, and touching anyone else or any metal item creates a dangerous electric spark. Worse yet, unbeknownst to Trex and (initially) his mom, the evil technocrat who financed the experiment has caught up with them at long last and, eager to get him back onto the operating table for further slicing and dicing, has hacked into his mental settings. Morrell really stacks the deck against her protagonist, but along with casting him with a winning mixture of decency and smarts, she deals him Mellie, a sharp young recluse who fancies herself a detective and, despite struggling with a profound anxiety disorder, proves a redoubtable ally through cascading crises that escalate from pranks into kidnappings, brutal attempted murders, last-tick rescues, and shocks both literal and in the form of revelations about Trex’s history, family, and even identity. Trex and the rest of the central cast are White; two siblings in the supporting cast are Black. The author offers reassurance to readers who identify with Mellie in an afterword.
Definitely buzzworthy. (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43324-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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