A third series installment that offers compelling storytelling with emotional depth and chilling suspense.
In Downing and Waugh’s latest middle-grade series entry, an American boy attempts to rescue his father, who is being held by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
This ever-expanding, wild odyssey of suspense is deftly grounded in early-20th-century American history and a well-calibrated orphan-in-peril vibe. Exploding Experiment (2023) introduced Lewis Carter, a bespectacled, asthmatic, then-11-year-old boy, left homeless in 1930s Pittsburgh after his chemist father’s mysterious apparent death. Using his dad’s secret “recipe” for an explosive but harmless substance, he survived by stealing food for himself and ragtag fellow street kids. Newspapers and police called them “The Flash Gang,” and assumed they were adults; then, real evildoers came after them. In Treasonous Tycoon (2024), Lewis and his best friend, brave Pearl, experience Pittsburgh’s deadly flood of 1936, and fight mobsters, corrupt moguls, and Nazi sympathizers. Now, in this third entry, Lewis’ father is apparently imprisoned in Adolf Hitler’s Berlin (before the start of World War II), and Lewis and Pearl embark on a rescue mission. Thanks to an attaché working for Pearl’s despised but rich absentee father, the pair cross the Atlantic, going first-class on an ocean liner with everything necessary to get in and out of Berlin. However, they wonder why the attaché is so helpful, and they also later puzzle over why a particular doddering old lady won’t leave them alone. Is the American singer (with a French stage name) they meet as nice as he appears? And is it a coincidence that a suspect watch repairman is on the ship, too?
Readers who are familiar with the series will correctly surmise that things don’t go smoothly for Lewis and Pearl once they reach Nazi-controlled Berlin. However, just how completely and quickly their luck changes darkens the plot with a notable and palpable sense of unease—one that is only heightened by the pervasive menace of Hitler’s brownshirts and SS officers. At one point, Lewis has a vicious encounter with some members of the Hitler Youth. Such chaos and hate seem to contradict the outwardly orderly world that the pair must navigate: “I don’t understand why nobody cares!” Lewis says. “Violence seems to be committed so…so casually. Nobody does anything.” Without ever feeling exploitative, the story takes care to portray the very real dangers of the time in a direct manner. The different ways that anxious Lewis and intrepid Pearl react to the various, profound plot twists throughout the story ring true—because this book, like the two series entries that precede it, is about fathers and what it means for children when adults make sacrifices for the greater good. Although the title of one of the last chapters here is “The End of the Adventures,” the epilogue makes clear there are still some loose ends to tie up and challenges for Lewis and Pearl to pursue. With its multiple plot twists and vivid sense of danger, this book doesn’t disappoint. Here’s hoping that this terrific first-rate middle-grade series continues.
A third series installment that offers compelling storytelling with emotional depth and chilling suspense.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035694
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Fitzroy Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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