An undemanding but fun and diverting adventure for early readers.
In Benjamin’s middle-grade chapter book, a young girl finds a wish-granting seashell and is drawn into an underwater adventure.
Eleven-year-old Marissa is vacationing at the beach when she comes across a pulsating, iridescent, talking seashell. It introduces itself as Periwinkle and tricks her into accompanying it underwater to the Sea-Queen’s palace. Marissa is carried there on the back of a dolphin called Delta (She can breathe underwater so long as she keeps hold of Periwinkle). It transpires that the Sea-Queen has been enchanted by a wizard into a comalike state that can only be broken should a “land mortal” find and pick an especially rare ocean flower called the Neptius. Escorted by Periwinkle, Delta, the mermaid Elga, and the curmudgeonly guard fish Tarak, Marissa sets out to save the queen. To succeed in her mission, she will have to evade the clutches of the villainous One-Eyed (a tiger shark) and his band of cutthroat sea creatures and elude Shantaya, the evil nymph who trained the wizard in the first place. The prose is simple but sometimes lacks fluency: “The Lords and Orgons spoke to her kindly and never put her under pressure. Had it been the opposite, she would have refused.” Marissa is largely a cipher, offering little to distinguish her as a protagonist. This may enable readers to project something of their own personalities onto her, but the blandly rendered Marissa’s actions are not especially inspiring. Benjamin affords her little agency, and, while nominally the hero of the story, she mostly just drifts along, carried—both literally and metaphorically—by her companions. Events play out quickly as the plot continuously shifts and leads the heroes into plenty of peril (though nothing too scary). The novel’s strength lies in the depiction of the ocean world and its creatures; the author has a knack for character, and Marissa’s friends and enemies alike sparkle with magic and personality. While the plot is slight, the setting is splendiferous and surely will stoke young imaginations.
An undemanding but fun and diverting adventure for early readers.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781733354875
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Notable Kids Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unforgettably quirky, fast-paced fun.
In a race against their enemies, the Porch girls must find a peculiar pearl in order to foil a fiendish plot.
After defeating a monstrous Kyrgalops in The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (2024), Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee Porch find themselves (after a series of madcap events) at Lake Kagloopy’s Purple Pearl Hotel with their mentor, Millicent Quibb. Quibb informs the trio that they must find the titular pearl before the members of their evil mad-scientist rivals, the KRA, do. If they fail, the KRA (whose members include the malevolent mayor, Majestina DeWeen, and her slimy sycophantic lawyer, Ashley Cookie) plans to use the gem to bestow the Gift of Endless Vibrancy on the villainous Talon Sharktūth. Hilarity ensues as the Porches attend the annual Shrimp Ball, encounter Umbrella Turkeys, search for Cloudite (floating cloud rocks), and don invisible but smelly woolen coats. Jokes aside, the girls’ story is intriguing, offering more clues to their mysterious backgrounds and tantalizing tidbits promising later adventures. McKinnon offers bountiful backstory (alongside a running joke to encourage readers to pick up the preceding volume) and enough guffaw-inducing jokes, zany footnotes, and creative jargon to enthrall readers both new and old with her delightful sophomore effort. Mixing humor, found family, and well-wrought worldbuilding, this sequel is a certain crowd pleaser. Final art not seen; in the previous book, the grayscale illustrations showed the girls with varying skin tones.
Unforgettably quirky, fast-paced fun. (appendices) (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780316555296
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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