Unearthly thrills and chills balanced by tweens’ down-to-earth concerns.
The Graveyard Girls contend with scam artists, a haunted doll, and a disappearing grave in this third series entry.
Notorious local murderer Silas Hoke’s grave has vanished. It’s not just that his bones are gone—the ground itself appears completely undisturbed. As the friends attempt to solve this mystery, complete with spectral clues that they struggle to decipher, they each have other issues to contend with. Whisper is upset about her father’s recent engagement, Frannie is bored without an acting project, Zuzu is trying to communicate with the ghost of Ginny Baker (whom Hoke killed in the 1920s), and the doll Sophie’s sister gave her has come to life and is trying to hurt her. Gemma continues her efforts to save her family’s business, the Spirit Sanctuary, by convincing the Borderlyne triplets, YouTube ghost hunters with millions of followers, to film an episode of their show at the store, but the internet celebrities’ interest turns out to be more earthly in nature. It’s also Gemma’s turn to tell a creepy story at their club meeting, and she delivers a stomach-turning O. Henry–style tale. Fans of the series will be delighted to continue the girls’ adventures and will enjoy the gentle scares that are tempered by realistic family and friendship issues. Most characters read white. Zuzu’s surname cues her as Japanese American, and a previous entry depicted Sophie as Black.
Unearthly thrills and chills balanced by tweens’ down-to-earth concerns. (Horror. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781454944584
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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