Readers who crave nonstop plot-driven adventure will not be disappointed.
Five high school sophomores returning to their New York prep school from a camping trip in Idaho realize that their private plane has been hijacked.
The passenger list includes Japanese-American Cassie, whose father owns the plane; her best friend, Indian-American Brandon; football star Tim, who is white; Tim’s Latinx girlfriend, Emily; Korean-American Jay, who feels out of place as a working-class boy on a baseball scholarship; and three white adults—their chaperone, pilot, and a substitute copilot. Soon after takeoff, something does not seem right: Cassie becomes seriously ill, and the plane is heading west. The story unfolds in chapters that alternate between the viewpoints of the teens on the plane and that of Michelle, a 16-year-old Nigerian-American intern at the National Air Traffic Investigation Center who is trying to discover the identity and motivation of the hijacker. Readers learn about each character—their personal ambitions, fears, thoughts, and mutual history. With the clock ticking before disaster ensues, emotions run high, the kidnappees have violent emotional breakdowns, and everyone questions whom to trust before readers learn the true motive behind the hijacking. Using straightforward, unadorned language that will appeal to reluctant readers, Griffin (Saving Marty, 2017, etc.) seamlessly weaves in topics such as financial struggles, family expectations, and relationship complications, shedding light on the friends, their emotions, and the hijacking without slowing down the action. Diversity is indicated solely through names.
Readers who crave nonstop plot-driven adventure will not be disappointed. (Thriller. 12-15)Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-04741-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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