Little is answered definitively, but fans won’t mind; they’ll just be pleased there are two more young Snicket adventures to...
Questions answered, question posed (the wrong one again). Mysteries solved, mystery deepens….
Nearly 13-year-old Lemony Snicket chased the missing statue of the Bombinating Beast under the inept, ignorant and annoying supervision of his mentor S. Theodora Merkson (“Who Could That Be at This Hour?”, 2012). That case didn’t turn out too well. They now have a new case, and Theodora looks to be pursuing this as ineptly as she did before. The duo is searching for Miss Cleo Knight, daughter of the heirs of Ink Inc. Her unconcerned parents appear to have been drugged by their private apothecary, Dr. Flammarion, but housekeepers Zara and Zora are deeply worried. Cleo’s a brilliant chemist, but shallow investigation points to her having run off to join the circus. Young Mr. Snicket knows most things are not as they seem at first, and while his mentor celebrates solving the case, he investigates further, with the help of associates from his last adventure, and discovers connections to their last case…and the case his sister Kit is working on. Snicket’s second of four All the Wrong Questions is more sly noir for preteens. Chock-full of linguistic play and literary allusions to children’s and classic literature, this is adventure mystery for young readers who like to think as they read.
Little is answered definitively, but fans won’t mind; they’ll just be pleased there are two more young Snicket adventures to come. (Mystery. 8-14)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-12305-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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