The conclusion to the Secret Coders graphic novel series.
Immediately following Potions and Parameters (2018), multiracial trio Hopper, Eni, and Josh code a portal to Professor Bee’s two-dimensional home world, Flatland, to bring back a Turtle of Light so that they can stop the villainous Dr. One-Zero. In Flatland, Eni and Josh appear as polygons (based on their normal features, square and triangular respectively), and as a female, Hopper is reduced to a profile outline. After coding their way out of a tough spot, the three return to their home dimension, where they’re soon to be split up—Hopper’s mother wants to move them someplace safer, and Eni’s mother is transferring him to a sports-focused school. That leaves them precious little time to decipher Dr. One-Zero’s diabolical final scheme and find a way to counter it. Defeating him will take teamwork—Professor Bee teaches them to modularize, and each works on subprograms. The final fight is an entertaining one, with high stakes, plenty of action, ingenuity, and comedic moments. The denouement’s final storyline is resolved through age-appropriate character relations. After the story, a “The Making of Secret Coders” segment reveals early sketches and describes how the author-illustrator team worked together, and there’s information about Yang’s “Reading without Walls” challenge.
Though readers may be sad to say goodbye to the world and characters, it’s been a glitch-free runtime, and they’ll be satisfied at the final bits and bytes . (Graphic science fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-610-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
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Three classic fairy tales given 20th- (and 30th-) century settings.
Originally published separately between 2001 and 2016, the stories are massaged in ways that tone down the violence of pre-Disney versions and show off the illustrator’s chops as a caricaturist. In “Cinderella” (2001), the scenes are filled with flamboyant art deco fashions and details; the fairy godmother creates a snazzy limo to take young Greta to the ball; and rosebud-lipped, pointy-nosed evil stepsisters Ermintrude and Elvira survive unmutilated. Similarly, in “Rapunzel” (2003), the title character escapes her mid-1970s flat to run off with (unblinded) pop musician Roger, and in “Sleeping Beauty” (2016), when 16-year-old science-fiction fan Annabel pricks her finger on the needle of a record player, she falls asleep for 1,000 years. The three female leads project airs of independence but really have no more agency here than in the originals. The all-White casts and conventional relationships of the first two stories do loosen a bit in “Sleeping Beauty,” as Annabel, who seems White, is watched over by an interracial pair of motherly aunts and awakened at long last (albeit with a touch, not a kiss) by Zoe, who has light-brown skin and long, black hair. Notes following each tale draw attention to the period details, and even the futuristic city at the end has a retro look. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.5-by-21-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70 % of actual size.)
The tweaks deliver no real alterations, but the clothing and hairstyles may amuse. (Fairy tales. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-84365-475-9
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Pavilion Children's
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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