Sleuthing aplenty but more character- than conundrum-driven.
Old photos of a boy in a coffin lead two young Ohio gumshoes into a web of secrets.
A mystery involving a possibly haunted funeral home owned by a newly arrived family puts the nerves as well as the investigative skills of outgoing Nevaeh Greevey and shy, cerebral Colin Creedmont to the test in this sequel to The Secret Letters (2022). Not only does a complex tale dating back decades ultimately come to light in long-hidden letters, news stories, pictures, and keepsakes, but the plot features spooky rummaging through the funeral home’s cluttered attic and a graveyard visit. There’s also a familial connection, as the parents of both amateur sleuths run house-clearing operations—formerly as rivals with very different ideas of what constitutes “junk” and now in a contentious partnership. But since Haddix focuses largely on her protagonists’ thoughts, reactions, and attitudes in shaping the narrative, her tale has a distinctly introspective turn—particularly after Colin learns something about the father he’s never met. Readers seeking a meaty mystery solved by clues and deduction will find one, but it sometimes takes second fiddle to developments within and between members of a mostly white cast. The blended family that moves into the funeral home is implied to be multiracial. One elderly source of information exhibits clear signs of dementia, which the author discusses, along with funeral customs and other relevant topics, in a lengthy afterword.
Sleuthing aplenty but more character- than conundrum-driven. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780063089815
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartening and hopeful, a love letter to black male youth grasping the desires within them, absorbing the worlds around...
Cooler-than-cool newcomer Styx Malone takes the more-sheltered brothers Caleb and Bobby Gene on a mischievous, path-altering, summer adventure of a lifetime as they embrace the extraordinary possibilities beyond the everyday in rural Indiana.
Readers may think an adventure such as they’ll find here wouldn’t be possible in the present day; this story takes place outside, where nature, know-how, creativity, and curiosity rule. Creeks, dirt roads, buried treasures, and more make up the landscape in Sutton, Indiana. Younger brother Caleb narrates, letting readers know from the outset that he’s tired of his dad’s racially tinged determination that they be safely ordinary: “I don’t want to be ordinary. I want to be…the other thing.” With Styx Malone around, Caleb and Bobby Gene will sure figure out what that “other thing” can become. The three black adolescents are enchanted with the miracle of the Great Escalator Trade, the mythic one-thing-leads-to-another bartering scheme that just might get them farther from Sutton than they’ve ever dreamed. As they get deeper and deeper into cahoots with Styx, they begin to notice that Styx harbors some secret ambitions of his own, further twisting this grand summer journey. “How do you move through the world knowing that you’re special, when no one else can see it?” begs the soul of this novel.
Heartening and hopeful, a love letter to black male youth grasping the desires within them, absorbing the worlds around them, striving to be more otherwise than ordinary. Please share. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1595-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
PERSPECTIVES
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