The issues-driven plotline is superimposed rather forcibly on the athletic one—but both feature suspenseful,...
A challenging endurance event provides an adopted teen with the perfect opportunity to track down his birth mother.
Still afflicted with frequent nightmares about being stolen 16 years before, Andreo eagerly agrees to join his strangely reticent adoptive parents in a seven-day “adventure race” set, conveniently, in the very area of Bolivia in which he was born. The race itself—which involves segments of mountain biking, trekking, canoeing and even caving—makes absorbing reading but serves largely as a backdrop to Andreo’s stubborn pursuit of his Quechua birth mother’s identity. Beginning with confirmation that he was a black-market baby, his quest leads to involvement with a baby-trafficking ring, puts him in considerable danger but also ultimately brings him face to face with his birth mother, who does not react as he expects her to. In a strenuous effort to engineer happy endings all round (except for the traffickers), Withers contrasts this scene with a different reception given to a similarly adopted teen who is shoehorned into the cast. She closes her tale with a round of fulsome apologies that neatly cements Andreo’s troubled relationship with his adoptive family.
The issues-driven plotline is superimposed rather forcibly on the athletic one—but both feature suspenseful, character-changing incidents. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77049-766-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last.
The rebellion against an evil archmage and his bowler-topped minions wends its way to a climax.
Dispatching five baddies on the first two pages alone, wand-waving villain-exterminator Vega Jane gathers a motley army of fellow magicals, ghosts, and muggles—sorry, “Wugmorts”—for a final assault on Necro and his natty Maladons. As Necro repeatedly proves to be both smarter and more powerful than Vega Jane, things generally go badly for the rebels, who end up losing their hidden refuge, many of their best fighters, and even the final battle. Baldacci is plainly up on his ancient Greek theatrical conventions, however; just as all hope is lost, a divinity literally descends from the ceiling to referee a winner-take-all duel, and thanks to an earlier ritual that (she and readers learn) gives her a do-over if she’s killed (a second deus ex machina!), Vega Jane comes away with a win…not to mention an engagement ring to go with the magic one that makes her invisible and a new dog, just like the one that died heroically. Measuring up to the plot’s low bar, the narrative too reads like low-grade fanfic, being laden with references to past events, characters who only supposedly died, and such lines as “a spurt of blood shot out from my forehead,” “they started falling at a rapid number,” and “[h]is statement struck me on a number of levels.”
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26393-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
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