Lacks the nuance of such exemplars as Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter (1983) or Sharon Creech’s The Castle...
Will a beautiful young girl locked up in a tower be an ingredient in the spell to fulfill a wicked queen’s wish for beauty, or will she be the queen’s undoing?
Queen Bogdana longs for nothing more than to be beautiful, and she will stop at nothing to achieve her heart’s desire. Queen Bogdana, who is really an evil witch, has almost everything else. The magic spell that will make her beautiful requires two ingredients Bogdana does not have: “a feather from a living hummingbird and a strand of hair the color of darkness plucked from the head of a girl with eyes the color of lavender who had lived at least eleven years but no more than twelve.” As luck would have it, a newborn baby girl, Violet, fits the requirement, and the queen has Violet and her mother incarcerated in a tower until the appropriate time comes to obtain the strand of hair. The plot is set for the perfect fairy tale: an evil witch, greed, an innocent young girl, a devoted parent, and loyal friends. Ultimately, though, the undoing of this story lies in the bland, one-dimensional quality of its characters. Time passes easily reading the book, but it’s not enough to lift it above others in its well-populated genre.
Lacks the nuance of such exemplars as Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter (1983) or Sharon Creech’s The Castle Corona (2007). (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: March 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9513-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and...
Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
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A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains.
Myla and Peter step into the path of a gang when they unite forces to find Peter’s runaway brother, Randall.
As they follow the graffiti tags that Randall has been painting in honor of the boys’ deceased father, they uncover a sinister history involving stolen diamonds, disappearances, and deaths. It started long ago when the boys’ grandmother, a diamond-cutter, partnered with the head of the gang. She was rumored to have hidden his diamonds before her suspicious death, leaving clues to their whereabouts. Now everyone is searching, including Randall. The duo’s collaboration is initially an unwilling one fraught with misunderstandings. Even after Peter and Myla bond over being the only people of color in an otherwise white school (Myla is Indian-American; mixed-race Peter is Indian, African-American, and white), Peter can’t believe the gang is after Myla. But Myla possesses a necklace that holds a clue. Alternating first-person chapters allow peeks into how Myla, Peter, and Randall unravel the story and decipher clues. Savvy readers will put the pieces together, too, although false leads and red herrings are cleverly interwoven. The action stumbles at times, but it takes place against the rich backdrops of gritty New York City and history-laden Dobbs Ferry and is made all the more colorful by references to graffiti art and parkour.
A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains. (Mystery. 10-12)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2296-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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