Exemplary characters enliven a comical lunar romp.
A young troublemaker on Earth has a chance to be a hero on the moon when he and other colonists face a natural disaster in this middle-grade SF tale.
Byron Barnett’s stirring imagination—and a device he calls a “biomass transducer”—allow him mentally to visit the moon and converse with José Ignacio, a 12-inch toy robot he sees as 7 feet tall. But the Arizonan’s love of adventure sometimes clashes with his parents’ rules. When he defies parental orders and spends his Saturday spelunking, he gets stuck and needs police assistance. Now he’s in legal trouble for excessive use of emergency and utility services. To avoid a hefty fine and hard labor, the Barnetts accept the judge’s third sentence option, “corrective exile.” It’s on the moon, and the entire family can go, as Byron’s engineer father already has a job offer pending there. Along with his parents, the almost 10-year-old Byron and his older brother, Taji, make the move, and he’s soon taking the “lunar school bus” to school and sometimes exploring his new world on his own. But threatening everyone on the moon is an approaching white worm, a space phenomenon that’s part black hole, part wormhole, and all catastrophe. As meteoroids rain down on the moon’s surface, Byron tries rescuing the people, including his family, who missed the lunar evacuation. Huddles’ literary debut is a brisk, delightful story. Though Byron is the undisputed protagonist, each Barnett is well-established. For example, the Barnetts adopted Taji, who is Swedish Kenyan, as they had been friends with his late parents. The highlight, however, is the friendship between Byron and José Ignacio. Byron is unquestionably imagining their conversations, and the generally reluctant José Ignacio is his apparent conscience. Huddles caters to his younger middle-grade readers, defining some of the big words, providing occasional reminders that José Ignacio is a toy, and italicizing dialogue when people are speaking via space helmet intercom. The prose and action are fast-paced and often funny: A bus that swerves to avoid a crashing meteoroid contains passengers “of the screaming variety.” This book launches a prospective series featuring Byron, and the time-jump ending is a clear setup for a sequel.
Exemplary characters enliven a comical lunar romp.Pub Date: March 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0997085181
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Notable Kids Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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