Skip to main content

Wild Born

By

Wild Born
by Brandon Mull
Scholastic, 2013.  202 pgs.  Fantasy

Our prolific Mr. Mull got the potentially hazardous assignment of writing the first book of Scholastic's new multi-platform book/internet series, Spirit Animals.  Hazardous, you say?  Of course, because the first author has to do all the set up: where do the kids come from, what are they like, why do they have the spirit animals they have, and how will they get along with one another; how does this new world relate to ours, if at all, and is it prehistoric, dystopian future, or parallel universe? All this is a potential action-killer, but Mull manages to convey a lot of information about Conor (a shepherd's son), Abeke  (an African/Niloan hunter), Meilin (an Oriental aristocrat), and Rollan (a street kid) as well as  their "familiars" - a wolf, a leopard, a panda, and a falcon--while moving the story right along to its frightening, cliff-hanging conclusion. Beasts good and bad come into play here, and though it is a bit hard to take the wombats seriously as Agents of Evil, Wild Born bodes well for an exciting, kid-friendly series to come.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) by Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick

By
If there's one book today's kids need to read, it is Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) . The authors provide a fun format for teaching etiquette to children. They discuss proper behavior at home, at school, at other people's homes and in public places. The information is completely up-to-date with cellphone manners and netiquette included. Fun, cartoony illustrations are on practically every page giving the book great visual appeal. This book is perfect for boys and girls in the fourth grade or older. WARNING: Bodily functions are discussed.
Post a Comment
Read more

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

By loo
Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more