An eleven-year-old aspiring detective seeking a sidekick who will "yes, boss" him takes up with a lonely young housewife in his upper-income suburb, and even if you can credit a kid like Andy being so interested in Edie Yakots' self-preoccupied prattle and her frequent references to "Harry—that's my husband" that he visits her daily after school, you still might question how many others his age will want to read about her. On looking back, the weakest link in The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was Mrs. F. herself; here, unfortunately, the "crazy lady" is central and what's worse she is 29 and less eccentric than "spacy flaky"—making The Dragon annoyingly trendy whereas The Mixed-Up Files in 1967 was refreshingly contemporary in its depiction of suburban kids. In truth, Edie really craves acceptance from the local garden clubbers; and aside from her habit of talking as if she'd been "born without conjunctions," her chief quirks are a fondness for dragons (Andy draws nothing else) and a desire to confront them that sets her to driving a numbers racket bag woman on her Thursday rounds through the ghetto. It is on these weekly jaunts that Andy, who believes Sister Henderson is collecting for her church (though readers catch on way ahead of him), gets what he thinks is his chance to apprehend some crooks. Crushingly, it's Edie's fast thinking that rescues him from their ambush, and later, attempting to return the favor, Andy makes an even bigger fool of himself when the robbers turn out to be police detectives. In a eureka ending typical of juvenile novels Andy realizes what Edie had been trying to teach him about dragons—but as if that didn't put her far enough ahead she announces on the last page that she's pregnant. Presumably, now she won't have to spend her energies flirting with ghetto dragons—though Konigsburg seems unaware to the end that Edie's caper (it used to be called slumming) is as distasteful as her all-round aid to Andy is deflating.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1974
ISBN: 0689823282
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1974
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A snappy mystery that’s full of heart.
A group of bright friends tackles the puzzle of their lives.
Elmwood, New Hampshire, 11-year-old Gina Sparks is small in stature but big on reporting ongoing dramas for the local newspaper with support from her journalist mom. When an unbelievable scoop comes her way, Gina must rely on her tightknit crew of sixth grade best friends whose initials happen to spell GEEK, a label they choose to proudly reclaim. She and science-minded prankster Elena Hernández, theater kid Edgar Feingarten, and driven math genius Kevin Robinson decide to get to the bottom of things when they learn that the Van Houten Toy & Game Company heir made elaborate plans to leave everything to the town of Elmwood before her death—but only if a member of the community could solve an intricate multistep puzzle. Gina hopes that deciphering the clues and finding the missing fortune will be just the thing to revitalize the down-on-its-luck town and bring the Elmwood Tribune back into the black, saving her mom’s job and Gina’s passion project. The GEEKs work together, using their individual talents and deductive reasoning skills to unravel the mystery. Infused with media literacy pointers, such as the difference between fact and opinion and reminders to avoid bias when reporting, the story encourages readers to think critically. Gina and Edgar read as White; Elena is cued as Latinx, and Kevin is implied Black.
A snappy mystery that’s full of heart. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37793-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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