More than a dino-infused historical adventure.
Older offers the third installment in the Dactyl Hill Squad series.
Opening where Freedom Fire (2019) ended, this sequel finds 12-year-old Afro-Cuban orphan Magdalys Roca reunited with her older brother, Montez, a Union soldier in the U.S. Civil War. Third-person, past-tense narration highlights brave, genuine Magdalys’ continued fight to thwart the plans of the white supremacist Knights of the Golden Circle and ensure the U.S. doesn’t become an empire of slavery, all while battling racism, sexism, and ageism—and riding dinosaurs. In a New Orleans lit through with intimate details, Magdalys finds a mentor, LaFarge, and discovers there’s more to dino-wrangling than she’s realized. LaFarge, a white man, is a pacifist (for sympathetic reasons), but Magdalys doesn’t let him off easy, reminding him he’s forgotten “what it means to care about something enough to fight for it.” Magdalys’ path leads her to the deserts of Mexico, where the new, democratically elected president is Zapotecan—welcome Indigenous representation. Good triumphs over evil—at least temporarily—and as “safety is always a fleeting thing,” Magdalys’ commitment to the struggle persists. Another book seems likely. As usual, Older infuses what could have been a basic romp with depth, using a critical social justice lens to examine the past while also embedding in it representation that we can aspire to in the future.
More than a dino-infused historical adventure. (author’s note) (Historical fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-26887-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
PROFILES
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