Meaningful cultural connections provide a solid foundation for this inventive fantasy adventure.
A Korean American tween and her friends team up to recover powerful heirlooms before they’re used to destroy the world.
Fresh off her world-saving heroics in Lia Park and the Missing Jewel (2022), expectations are high for 12-year-old Lia’s first year at the International Magic School. She is anxious to prove her abilities as a powerful spell-caster among her new classmates. Instead, it’s Joon, Lia’s best friend, whose talents impress, stirring jealousy, competition, and insecurity between the two. Complicating matters given their growing distance, Lia and Joon are matched with classmates Eugene and Chloe and sent on a dangerous mission. They must retrieve hidden artifacts before the King of Darkness uses them to unleash imprisoned monsters into the world. Along the way, Lia learns that a traitor has been sabotaging their efforts, and she has reason to suspect each of her teammates. Revelations about the double agent and a mysterious prophecy set up the next volume. As in the first installment, Korean words and phrases appear throughout the text, and Korean landmarks act as locales, adding to the sense of place. Strong worldbuilding continues to provide a captivating magical universe inspired by Korean mythology. Grounding the story is the platonic relationship between Lia and Joon, which realistically portrays the tension between establishing your own identity while preserving a close friendship.
Meaningful cultural connections provide a solid foundation for this inventive fantasy adventure. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781534487963
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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