“Sammy Feral = dude supreme!” he crows at the end. Forcibly engineered as his ultimate triumph is, he merits a few howls of...
Readers afflicted only with pesky sibs should count their blessings: 12-year-old Sammy comes home one day to find his whole family (dog included) turned into a pack of ravening werewolves.
Sammy is saved from being bitten himself, or maybe torn apart, by the timely arrival of Donny, a leather-clad cryptozoologist who shoots tranquilizer darts from a silver blowpipe and explains that the werewolves will revert to (more or less, as it happens) human once the full moon has passed. Fortunately, Sammy’s parents own a public zoo with behind-the-scenes transit cages that can hold the feral Ferals temporarily. Unfortunately, even back in human form, Sammy’s little sister, Natty, retains a taste for raw sausage and live hamster. Can Sammy devise a cure for the Were Virus before the next full moon—while also fending off professor Pickitt, a rival cryptozoologist scheming to turn the Feral Zoo into a display of freaky creatures? Sammy chronicles his plunge into “wackoville” in diarylike entries punctuated with bulleted lists, shocked exclamations of “rewind!” and simple line drawings of the cast and selected scenes.
“Sammy Feral = dude supreme!” he crows at the end. Forcibly engineered as his ultimate triumph is, he merits a few howls of appreciation for staying so resolutely on task. (Adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62365-032-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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