Posts tagged ‘150-199 pages’

Study Hall of Justice

Study Hall of Justice.jpgTitle: Study Hall of Justice
Series: Secret Hero Society
Author: Derek Fridolfs
Illustrator: Dustin Nguyen
ISBN: 9780545825016
Pages: 175
Publisher/Date: Scholastic Inc., c2016 DC Comics

This school is weird!
Yesterday I felt a kid blur past me. Today I witnessed a girl flying through the air. I’m not kidding. Not to mention there’s a ton of clowns and . . . I think I’ve even seen ninja lurking about.
It’s crazy.
My mind and body have been trained by the very best (Alfred saw to that with private tutors). My eyes aren’t playing tricks. So there must be a logical explanation for it.
My investigation continues. But I must also make time to beat level seven of Vigilante Fighter Turbo. Resist the urge to download a cheat code. (28)

Bruce Wayne has recently been accepted to the prestigious Ducard Academy. Upon arrival however, Bruce keeps noticing unexplained things happening. With the administration ignoring the warning signs and possibly aiding in the classroom chaos, who can Bruce turn to for assistance? Equally confused Clark Kent and Diana Prince are also hiding something, but they seem the best options to aid in his investigations. Now the key is to solve the mystery without getting suspended.

This book is a fast read described by some as a hybrid graphic novel, which confused me for a while as to where to put it. After it arrived though, it obviously belonged with the graphic novels. While the primary story is told in panels and pictures, supplemental information is provided in paragraph format in illustrated diary entries, memos, reports, and text messages. Told in short vignettes that propel the main plot of finding out the school’s secrets, many readers with only a cursory knowledge of the DC Comics world will recognize superheroes and super villains featured, including the Joker, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane, Lex Luthor, and of course the three main characters. Clark is shown as a bumbling do-good, who on more than one occasion either spills or comes close to spilling information about his secret. Diana is shown as slightly more competent, but also more assertive and angry than either of the boys. Bruce is portrayed as a lonely know-it-all, although my favorite line is when he questions the lack of masks for both Diana’s and Clark’s secret identities. There are passing nods to future events, such as Clark becoming a reporter and Alfred’s at the time off-handed comment to Bruce that “I certainly won’t be a willing partner in your flights of fancy, sir!” (151)

The whole story however is relatively anticlimactic. While yes there are strange things happening in the school, no one is ever in any real danger, and even the weirdness is relatively low-key (getting pied in the face in the hallway, Brainiac as a library monitor, and even the ninjas repeatedly noticed don’t interfere with day-to-day operations until the very end of the book). Although it appears this is a start of a series, the resolution leaves me wondering how these three investigators are going to be able to combine their efforts again in the future. Overall, it becomes a nice introduction and mash-up for super fans or those who like their superhero stories light.

Rhythm Ride

Rhythm Ride.jpgTitle: Rhythm Ride: A Road Trip Through the Motown Sound
Author: Andrea Davis Pinkney
ISBN: 9781596439733
Pages: 166 pages
Publisher/Date: Roaring Book Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership, c2015.

Berry was sick of seeing his hard-earned creativity and the talents of black performers go unrewarded. He began to seriously consider building a record label that would allow him to produce the work of black artists, to publish his music, to have complete control over the money he and the singers earned, and also to have control over how black performers were portrayed to the public. (19)

In 1959, Berry Gordy secured an eight hundred dollar loan from his family to begin his dream, the music company Motown. Motown became known by its nickname Hitsville, as the production company put out hit after hit from big name, local talent like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and Diana Ross. For slightly over a decade, Berry Gordy and his company, who were treated more like family, were behind some of the biggest hits in pop and R&B. But when Gordy moved to California to expand the company, the music lost its rhythm, and artists started pursuing other opportunities and other companies where they could garner the attention and money they felt they deserved. By the 1980s, only a few loyal artists were still garnering hits, and Gordy sold the company before the decade ended, as the era of Motown had already ended earlier.

The narrator is “the Groove,” which takes on the personality of a smooth talking tour guide who has a vested interest in your enjoyment, entertainment, and well-being. It makes the remembrance of pivotal historical moments, like the Civil Rights movement and assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy, more manageable, reassuring readers that it’s in the past and we lived through it while not deemphasizing the importance of the events. Sometimes we forget the narrator is even present, and other times that effort is stressed in multiple paragraphs that try to reestablish the road trip ambiance. Some readers may like it, while others might have preferred a more straightforward narration with less embellishment.

Little details, like the decorum and manners training that each artist received, break up the monotony of the presentation, which at times can read like a who’s who laundry list of best hits of the 1960s. There are hints of personality for some of the acts, especially when they are soloists instead of groups, but the groups almost become interchangeable, especially when they don’t have those back stories to distinguish them from the other groups presented. The recordings that were more political in nature, such as MLK’s speeches and the concept album featuring songs about the Vietnam War, were unknown to me, and I wish Pinkney had focused more on the aftermath of those publications, or the dissent in the group prior to publication. I feel like that is important to set the tone, and readers just received a minimalist view of the dissension caused by anti-war cover album, especially considering Marvin Gaye was Berry Gordy’s brother-in-law.

Copious amounts of photos help delineate the different groups, but they are primarily staged publicity shots and very few show either the inside workings of the company or the community and culture that would have provided context. There is one page in particular that would have done well for thorough editing. When introducing the Primettes, soon to be known as the Supremes, Pinkney identifies the women pictured as “Betty McGlown, Diane Ross, Mary Willson, and Florence Ballard” in both a caption and in the text on page 94. On page 95, “Barbara Martin left to have a baby, so the newly formed quartet was down to three singers.” Further research on my part leads me to conclude that both women were only temporarily involved in the group, so maybe it’s not really an error, but I wish the discrepancy wasn’t there. We also are presented with a picture of the Temptations with new member David Ruffin before his replacement of original member Elbridge “Al” Bryant is discussed in the narrative. Minor mistakes, granted, but it leads to a feeling of sloppy editing. Another missed opportunity is consulting first hand-account source material. The detailed source notes pages are much appreciated, but it’s rare that a listed source is from that time period directly, with most of the sources being commentary or biographies published decades after events occurred.

Part of the difficulty Pinkney faces is making the subject matter important to children, as most of them are only familiar with Motown music as being the old songs that their parents (or maybe even at this point their grandparents!) listened to. While I’m a fan of the “oldies” because my father played them for me, I think most readers are going to be more familiar with Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Adelle, just to name a few. If they are already familiar with the subject, great, but I don’t think they’ll be running to pick this one off the shelves, even with the great appealing cover and the local connection to Motown as I work at a Michigan library. I understand the difficulties this would have added to the production, but I feel it would have benefited greatly from the inclusion of a CD with at least a sampling of the songs discussed in the book.

nonfiction mondayThis review is posted in honor of Nonfiction Monday. Take a look at what everyone else is reading in nonfiction this week.

Fuzzy Mud

Fuzzy Mud.jpgTitle: Fuzzy Mud
Author: Louis Sachar
ISBN: 9780385743785
Pages: 183 pages
Publisher/Date: Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, c2015.

With sudden ferocity, Chad lunged at him. He slugged Marshall in the face, and then in the side of the neck.
Tamaya screamed.
Marshall tried to protect himself, but Chad hit him twice more, then grabbed him by the head and threw him to the ground.
“Leave him alone!” Tamaya shouted.
Chad glared at her. “You’re next, Tamaya,” he said.
Marshall tried to get up, but Chad’s knee caught the side of his head, knocking him back down.
Tamaya didn’t think. She just reacted.
She reached into the fuzzy mud and grabbed a handful of thick and gooey muck. She ran at Chad, and as he turned toward her, she shoved it into his face. (32-33)

Marshall always walks younger neighbor Tamaya home from their prestigious school. In order to avoid a fight with antagonistic new kid Chad, Marshall takes them deep into the neighboring woods, but Chad follows. They escape, although the next day they realize they might have discovered something that impacts not just them but possibly the entire world. Sachar makes it pretty clear that the fuzzy mud is the culprit for all their troubles, especially since the book is titled after the substance. Excerpts from public hearings that take place prior to and after the primary events are lightly interspersed, but they serve more as info dumps and red herrings in building suspense then actually advancing the plot. The happy ending is plausible if a little convenient, but sometimes scientific discoveries happen that way. For younger readers not ready for Hiassen, this might be a good introduction to the eco thriller genre.

A Nearer Moon

A Nearer Moon.jpgTitle: A Nearer Moon
Author: Melanie Crowder
ISBN: 9781481441483
Pages: 150 pages
Publisher/Date: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, c2015.

[…] It was one of Mama’s never-to-be-broken rules:
Don’t go past the bend in the river.
Don’t go below the dam.
Steer far away from the slick.
People said there was a creature that lived beneath the slick lying still as a gravestone on top of the water, a creature that cast a curse on the swamp and sickened anyone who drank it. But Luna didn’t believe in the creature, and she didn’t believe in curses. (10-11)

Luna and her little sister Willow love going out on the water on their pole boat, trying to catch fish in the dam that their village of stilted houses lives over. Only the oldest residents remember the days before the dam mysteriously appeared, stopping the river and turning the bright waters into the treacherous swamp. Luna doesn’t believe in curses until their boat mysteriously dips under the water line and Willow ends up with the swamp sickness. With only weeks until the wasting illness kills her sister and no cure in sight, Luna might have to start believing in magic and miracles.

Told in alternating perspectives, first from Luna’s and then from the view of a water sprite decades prior, it’s at first a little confusing. But very quickly readers will realize that they are similar stories of sisterly bonds and the lengths sisters will go to maintain them. Having just watched My Friend Totoro, the two stories are similar, with an independent pair of sisters who take advantage of the world around them, encounter a magical creature, and have to overcome an illness. Crowder’s writing style and word choice also remind me of Thanhha Lai’s Listen, Slowly, very lyrical and descriptive. Luna’s grandmother at one point “raised her eyes to the ceiling, searching the cobwebbed corners of her mind” which just sounds so poetic.

Luna is a likeable character, who feels guilt over her involvement in her sister’s illness and that it’s her sister and not herself who got sick. She adventures time and again out by herself, or with steady childhood friend Benny by her side, in efforts to cure this disease that everyone else has resigned to the fact that it’s incurable. “It was a supremely stupid thing she was doing. And if the brief history of her life was any indication, if she was set on doing a supremely stupid thing, it was best to have Benny along.” (33) I’m envious of her freedom of movement, as I don’t think my mother would have let me out of her sight after the first attempt, much less the second or third. Any other book would have made Benny and Luna a romantic pairing, but I’m so glad they are just friends here.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the sprite’s side of the story. It proves Crowder’s efficiency with words, that she’s able to so effortlessly squeeze two stories into only 150 pages. Perdita is an adventurous water sprite whose twin sister worries about her never-ending ramblings and roving. She and Luna are a lot alike in their independent and inquisitive natures. The stories start decades apart but they finally catch up to one another in the end. I loved the ending, as (if blog readers will allow me one final comparison) just like in Frozen there really isn’t a bad guy, but only broken hearts that once mended heal everything. A beautifully told story.

Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings

Enchanted Air.jpgTitle: Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir
Author: Margarita Engle
ISBN: 9781481435222
Pages: 192 pages
Publisher/Date: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, c2015.

In one country, I hear the sweet words of another.
Dulce de leche means sweet of milk.
Guarapo is sugarcane juice.

At home in California, when I speak
boastful English, I can say that I fly,
but when I make the same claim in Spanish,
I have to say: voy por avion
I go by airplane

Two countries.
Two families.
Two sets of words.

Am I free to need both,
or will I always have to choose
only one way
of thinking? (13)

Margarita’s mother is from Cuba, and her father’s family is Ukraine. For a while they travel from Cuba to the United States and back, visiting family and a whole new culture and world in Cuba. But then conflicts between her two homes flare, and her family is unable to travel back to Cuba. In the beginning, her family is observed and questioned, but as the hostility continues Margarita can’t understand the animosity present, and how her fellow Americans are uneducated and unaffected, since she is privy to a wholly different perspective.

This is another book I have a hard time envisioning recommending to someone unless they had a special interest in autobiographies, prejudices, and the Cuban/American tensions. The word choices and verses are powerfully brief in nature, and fans of Brown Girl Dreaming may also enjoy this novel. But this is essentially a travelogue without any travel. Starting with some prettily portrayed trips, the second half details the prejudice and trials that the family faces. Instead, she waxes reflectively on idealized travels to Cuba in her childhood, where she rides horses with her cousins and juxtaposes them with the horrors of a closed Cuba after the Bay of Pigs invasion. It’s an eye-opening portrayal and certainly one that is relevant in the recent reopening of relations with Cuba by President Barack Obama, but not one that is discussed in-depth in schools, a disparity that is ironically addressed in the book itself and will impact and contribute to its obscurity. I can’t end this review without commenting that the cover is horrible, with a symbolic dove overlaid by half an illustrated face, and not at all appealing.

nonfiction mondayThis review is posted in honor of Nonfiction Monday. Take a look at what everyone else is reading in nonfiction this week.

 

Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth

This week, in honor of World Space Week, we’ve got reviews featuring space, in all it’s many forms. Today, I’m reviewing a graphic novel featuring visitors from another world.

Hilo Boy Crashed EarthTitle: Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth
Series: Hilo #1
Author/Illustrator: Judd Winick
Color by: Guy Major
ISBN: 9780385386173
Pages: 192 pages
Publisher/Date: Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, c2015.

”Hey.”
“AAAAH!”
“AAAAH! Is that a greeting? I like it! AAAAH! Where am I?”
“Berke County”
“Never heard of it. Who are you?”
“Um … I’m D.J.”
“What’s this green stuff, D.J.?”
“It’s grass.”
“It smells outstanding!”
“Who are you?”
“I don’t remember. That could be a problem. My memory is a busted book.”
“Busted book.”
“Yep. Missing a lotta pages. Gaps! Holes! For example, how did I get here?”
“Are you kidding? It was insane! You fell from the sky!” (21-22)

A giant meteor falls from the sky and in its wake D.J. meets Hilo, whose suffering from amnesia. Hilo has some peculiar qualities that lead D.J. to believe he’s not from around here. Another surprise visitor is D.J.’s old neighbor Gina, who has just moved back with her family after being gone for three years. D.J. isn’t really good at anything, not like his siblings with their many hobbies and talents, so teaching Hilo things about Earth, like you can’t go around eating grass and wearing only underwear is not something he’s looking forward to doing. D.J.’s job is going to get even harder though when he, Hilo, and Gina realize that Hilo might not be the only thing falling from the sky.

This fast paced and brightly colored graphic novel will catch reader’s interest as soon as they open its pages. It starts with Hilo and D.J. running away from a giant robot, and it doesn’t stop there. Hilo has a sporadic naivety, with flashbacks of his past and absorbed information from D.J. filling in some of the blanks. While he doesn’t initially know what grass and clothes are, he somehow knows how to use a spoon properly and how to create a distraction. There’s so much unexplained about Hilo though that you’re willing to look the other way to see what crazy thing he’s going to do next. Some of the nonstop movement and action is nicely depict, primarily the fight sequences, but others look like they are stills with the hair streaming behind Gina the only clue they are moving. Winick’s posing and running gags really show the Looney Tunes influence the author mentions in his back cover biography. It’s certainly an enjoyable option for younger sci-fi fans who aren’t ready for the scarier world domination movies.

Cleopatra in Space

Today, in honor of World Space Week, we’ve got two reviews on the first two books in the Cleopatra in Space series. Each month for a previous job, I wrote a maximum 150 word review of a new book that came into the library during the month. I’ve expanded that idea to the blog in a feature I’m calling To the Point Tuesdays. The review of the second book (The Thief and the Sword) meets this criteria. If you want to play along, just post a link in the comments and I’ll add them to the post.

Cleopatra in Space 1Title: Target Practice
Series: Cleopatra in Space #1
Author/Illustrator: Mike Maihack
ISBN: 9780545528429
Pages: 172 pages
Publisher/Date: Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., c2014.

“It was during this recovery that an ancient scroll detailing the arrival of a hero was uncovered. A hero who would appear at this exact time and place to defeat the Xerx and restore peace and order to the galaxy.”
“You are that hero in the scroll, Cleopatra” (51)

Cleopatra (yes, the queen from the history books) is teleported from her time into a very different future. Expected to save the world from the Xerx and their leader, Xaius Octavian, Cleopatra is flummoxed by the need to attend classes, where she excels at combat but is exasperated by everything else. Guided by Khensu, the ancestor of her long-dead pet cat and monitored by a council of cats and alien teachers, Cleopatra isn’t sure what to think of this new world. When her first assignment lands her in hot water, Khensu realizes the council might not have his protégé’s best interests in mind.

Although she may be old as a mummy, Cleopatra is anything but a relic from the past. Preferring to be called Cleo, using modern day slang such as “Yup” and “Jeez” even before she time travels, and adapting seemingly instantaneously to things like paper books. It’s all done very tongue and cheek, with her Egyptian friend Goz calling out her smack talking “You couldn’t hit the broad side of a pyramid” with an equally sarcastic “That doesn’t even make sense.” before getting cut off (29-30). The fast and furious action-packed opening scene begins with her assignment mission before going back in time and then forward again all within the first 50 pages. Maihack smartly skips over several months of classwork so we can then get some additional action sequences with her assignment, finishing up at the end of the first semester. Hopefully all the subsequent volumes don’t progress as quickly.

Cleopatra in Space 2Title: The Thief and the Sword
Series: Cleopatra in Space #2
Author/Illustrator: Mike Maihack
ISBN: 9780545528443
Pages: 190 pages
Publisher/Date: Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., c2015.

”Xaius Octavian, I presume? I hear you’re looking for a thief.” (19-20)

A nearly wordless fifteen page opening introduces a cocky but highly capable African-American thief hired to steal an artifact being temporarily stored in military headquarters. Next door, Yasiro Academy is having their winter dance for military cadets, including the time-teleported Cleopatra, who hinders but doesn’t catch the thief in a madcap chase scene through the school and city. Meanwhile Cleo’s friend Brian has discovered there may be a way to send savior Cleo back to her own time, whether she wants to or not. Their search begins, but advisor Khensu isn’t telling them everything. The cityscapes are gorgeous, reminiscent of Gotham and Giza, and the action sequences demand your attention. Readers should appreciate the little details, like Cleo taking off her shoes before beginning the chase. The characters are beginning to evolve, with back stories that unavoidably slow the plot. I look forward to upcoming revelations, especially about the thief.

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