Maya never expected to recover from the death of her best friend Stephanie, but accidentally bonding with Rimi completely...
An everyday seventh grader has a secret alien best friend and a house full of magic-wielding mentors next-door.
Maya never expected to recover from the death of her best friend Stephanie, but accidentally bonding with Rimi completely changed her life (Thresholds, 2010). Rimi is sissimi, a young alien who communicates telepathically with Maya and hides as Maya's shadow—if a shadow could eat, move objects and draw. Not only is Rimi a wonderful new best friend, she's introduced Maya to her neighbors in Janus House, where Maya is now learning to be a magical practitioner so that she can one day to travel to alien worlds. Maya’s adventures are sheer, joyful middle-school–meets-magic. She's concerned about making friends at school, her art and piano lessons, meeting aliens after classes, the embarrassment when Rimi telekinetically makes her burp, having the best Halloween costume and a mean classmate who also has a bonded sissimi. Though Maya is often confused by the plethora of alien concepts she's expected to understand (Rimi constantly uses undefined words), she finds her new responsibilities and friendships thrilling. The discombobulated mystery of who the bad guys are (presumably to be discovered later in the series) is almost incidental to the daily adventures of an ordinary girl with a shadow from another planet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01283-1
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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