A delightful, hijinks-filled adventure that spotlights characters with different abilities.
A boy with autism helps discover a lost treasure and foil aspiring money printers in this third installment of a children’s book series.
Just finished with the third grade, Morris Flip overhears two men hatching a plan to create a summer camp on the Mortimer Potts estate, where a treasure in jewels is rumored to be hidden. Promising a big reward, they’ll enlist campers to search—but will actually split the valuables and skip town. While Morris is a master at mimicking sounds, he has autism and is nonverbal, so the plot remains secret. Eager elementary school campers include the Skinks sisters, Bluebell and Bonnie, and their friends Mitzi Mufflin, Melody Wu, and Hoops Russell. Some doubt Bonnie’s ability to navigate forest paths in her wheelchair or blind Mitzi’s ability to get around with her cane, but both make it work. Meanwhile, Morris overhears yet another plot. Mr. Skinks’ factory is testing a new press for printing government money. Two workers plan to print themselves a fortune while distracting everyone by faking a crisis at the summer camp. Various adults, including an inventor, a secret agent, a self-styled duke, and a hapless school principal, find themselves embroiled in the ensuing chaos while Morris becomes an unexpected hero. In this latest volume of her Potts-Abilities series, Cooper tells another very entertaining story, with many hilarious scenarios (such as a string of mishaps for the principal) and some nice twists. She shows the strengths of her diverse characters, who are funny and charming, while not discounting the challenges they face. Coincidence plays perhaps too large a role, but it’s all part of the fun. As in the previous installments, Santucci supplies lively monochrome illustrations that deftly capture the players’ varied personalities and appearances.
A delightful, hijinks-filled adventure that spotlights characters with different abilities.Pub Date: April 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-94-874797-4
Page Count: 118
Publisher: J2B Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay.
Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
SEEN & HEARD
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