The relatable, refreshingly non-Caucasian protagonist will take readers on an action-packed cultural adventure.
The world seems to be on the brink of destruction, as the Maya people might have predicted, and its fate might just rest on the shoulders of a single teenage boy in Simone’s debut young-adult thriller.
As far as Cory McClintock knows, he’s a normal kid. The only thing distinguishing him is that, when he was a baby, his father adopted him from a Maya woman who had begged him to take care of her son. One day, when Cory arrives home from school, he discovers his dad unconscious and bleeding; Cory is immediately kidnapped at gunpoint by Culebra, a man claiming to be his uncle, who takes him to Guatemala. According to Culebra, Cory is the latest in a line of Maya kings who have the ability to reshape the world in the last days of the Maya calendar, a time of planetary upheaval and rebirth. Culebra plans on sacrificing him on an altar, thus taking Cory’s power for himself. Simone has crafted a taut novel that’s impressive for its razor-edge suspense as well as its verisimilitude. Written in first-person present tense, the prose is incredibly tight, sharp and intelligent. Cory never comes across as anything less than a fully believable young man, despite the bizarre circumstances in which he finds himself. His attempts to escape his uncle’s clutches provide nail-biting suspense. Given the novel’s title, one might expect an exploitation of ancient culture, but Simone’s tale has the utmost respect for Maya civilization as the narrative spins a sensationalist tale out of a modern interpretation. The story ultimately illuminates Maya beliefs, while managing to pay homage to pop culture’s apocalyptic interpretation.
The relatable, refreshingly non-Caucasian protagonist will take readers on an action-packed cultural adventure.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1463567330
Page Count: 216
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Hillenbrand takes license with the familiar song (the traditional words and music are reproduced at the end) to tell an enchanting story about baby animals picked up by the train and delivered to the children’s zoo. The full-color drawings are transportingly jolly, while the catchy refrain—“See the engine driver pull his little lever”—is certain to delight readers. Once the baby elephant, flamingo, panda, tiger, seal, and kangaroo are taken to the zoo by the train, the children—representing various ethnic backgrounds, and showing one small girl in a wheelchair—arrive. This is a happy book, filled with childhood exuberance. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201804-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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