Frustrating.
New guests bring new adventures.
In this second installment of the series, supernatural forces are still preventing siblings Willow and Ash McGinn and their parents from leaving the Exit 13 Motel. Despite their predicament, the mood lifts when a group of alien-loving convention-goers arrives. Soon the little inn is bustling, and Willow and Ash pitch in to help clerk Kristoff and handyman Mr. Do. Events take another turn when Kristoff goes missing, a creepy guest sends Willow on a harrowing chase, and Ash and the alien aficionados find themselves in an otherworldly forest. Preller’s latest has short chapters with brisk pacing; however, despite the narrative energy, more questions are raised than answered. The McGinns keep unearthing one new thing after another—possible monsters, a mysterious book, and more—but little is explained or resolved, making for an exasperating reading experience. Additionally, key worldbuilding points are stretched too thin to make sense, namely why some can come and go from the motel and others cannot. Black-and-white comic panels interspersed throughout begin to feel gimmicky, not adding depth to the shallow characterizations. The depiction of Mr. Do feels especially superficial and tokenizing; attempts to convey his Korean heritage are surface-level, and his clipped speech patterns—even in his internal monologues—seem othering. Willow and Ash are biracial; Kristoff is described as pale.
Frustrating. (Graphic hybrid. 7-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781338810455
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
A candid and powerful reckoning of history.
Summer is off to a terrible start for 12-year old African-American Candice Miller.
Six months after her parents’ divorce, Candice and her mother leave Atlanta to spend the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, at her grandmother’s old house. When her grandmother Abigail passed two years ago, in 2015, Candice and her mother struggled to move on. Now, without any friends, a computer, cellphone, or her grandmother, Candice suffers immense loneliness and boredom. When she starts rummaging through the attic and stumbles upon a box of her grandmother’s belongings, she discovers an old letter that details a mysterious fortune buried in Lambert and that asks Abigail to find the treasure. After Candice befriends the shy, bookish African-American kid next door, 11-year-old Brandon Jones, the pair set off investigating the clues. Each new revelation uncovers a long history of racism and tension in the small town and how one family threatened the black/white status quo. Johnson’s latest novel holds racism firmly in the light. Candice and Brandon discover the joys and terrors of the reality of being African-American in the 1950s. Without sugarcoating facts or dousing it in post-racial varnish, the narrative lets the children absorb and reflect on their shared history. The town of Lambert brims with intrigue, keeping readers entranced until the very last page.
A candid and powerful reckoning of history. (Historical mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-94617-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
PROFILES
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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