Review by New York Times Review
IN TALES OF wayward children, parents are often a child's best allies in cleaning up the mess. But what happens when the parents are wayward and the child their rescuer? That's the dilemma facing the heroes of four new novels. IN KENNETH OPPELS astonishing INKLING (Knopf, 272 pp., $17.99; ages8 to 12), the death of Ethan's mother leaves his artist father a zombie-walking "Coma Dad," paralyzed by creative block. Kids at school assume Ethan has inherited his father's genius, begging him to draw on command, slipping him fan letters for his father and choosing him as the artist for a massive school project, based only on his dad's fame - though Ethan alone knows his father hasn't produced a single piece of work in two years. Enter Inkling, a splotch of ink that manifests from Ethan's father sketchbook as a living embodiment of creativity, with the power to read, write and draw. Ethan prizes Inkling like a golden goose: What if it could draw for both him and his father? All Ethan has to do is successfully parent it: feed it, nurture it, manage its volatile emotions. Yet Inkling has roared to life with a purpose, "a whole storm of feelings" congealed into a Rorschach blot, straight from Ethan's father's unconscious. Throughout the book, vibrant, shapeshifting illustrations by Sydney Smith add to this effect. Ink splashes at page corners as if Inkling were alive between the book's covers; characters seem to morph out of black puddles; and whenever the inky gremlin is left untethered too long, Smith mirrors its creative rages with startling full-page panels suggesting Inkling might swallow the story straight out of readers' hands. With each page, we feel Ethan's tension growing, his father's anxieties looming larger and larger, like Inkling's growing blot. To control Inkling, then, the son must find a way to vanquish Dad's demons. That Inkling represents the father's spirit instead of the son's is a stirring choice. Ethan conceals Inkling from his father at first-literally, protecting a piece of his father's soul from him, until Ethan crumbles under the pressure. "A secret was a heavy thing to carry around for so long," he laments, "and day by day it only got heavier." Ethan is a stand-in for every child who must take on the role of parent to sustain a family. But part of what Ethan has to learn is that his father's failings aren't his own; the more Ethan tries to parent Inkling, the more it metastasizes. When the monstrous blotch is finally devoured, we feel Ethan's relief, his father's soul no longer his ward. ETHAN'S father is known only as Dad, but in Christopher Healy's a perilous journey OF DANGER & MAYHEM: A DASTARDLY PLOT (Walden Pond Press, 384 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), Mom has a name: Cassandra Pepper, a manic, stargazing inventor in 1883 New York, who seems to be less mother to her 12-year-old daughter, Molly, and more balland-chain. Molly's father is dead, but his ghost looms large: He had "promised his beloved Cassandra she would never have to give up on her dream" of rivaling Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla. After her father's death, then, Molly quits school and becomes her mother's assistant, refusing "to let her father become a liar." Determined to showcase Cassandra's flying contraption at the World Fair, only to be thwarted by the all-male Inventors' Guild, Molly soon uncovers the dastardly plot of the title, a death machine targeting the entire city, which Molly and her mother must team up to defuse. With the help of allies, including a Chinese boy named Emmett ("We don't have the best reputation around here," he sighs, fully aware of anti-immigrant sentiment), Molly tracks down the suspected assassins. One by one, the clues point toward famous inventors - Alexander Graham Bell, Edison himself - which gives young readers a chance to meet and exonerate each one before the chase begins again. But amid Healy's whip-smart banter and well-hewed cameos (including appearances by several unsung female inventors), a thorny question takes hold. Unlike Ethan, who struggles valiantly to not be his parents, Molly is her mother's proxy. Indeed, Molly exists so purely to serve Cassandra's hopes, Cassandra's dreams, Cassandra's future, that even mother and daughter are left wondering at book's end: What does Molly want? MOLLY HAS MUCH in common with Mel in Matt Phelan's illustrated knights vs. dinoSAURS (Greenwillow, 160 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), a squire for the knight Bors, "a brute in shining armor" who initially has no clue his liege is a girl. At King Arthur's Round Table, where the pair are in service, knights act as their squires' exclusive guardians, which means Mel's parents are out of the picture and Bors is, essentially, her dad. Testing knight and squire - along with the rest of Arthur's knights - is a forest full of Jurassic beasts. Whether jousting with a triceratops or facing down a Trex, Mel should come with a halo: She's thoughtful, sensitive and wise, "always thinking, planning, preparing." Parenting her seems to require little more than staying out of her way. Not that Bors seems equipped for the role, insisting a female squire is an affront to his dignity and the natural order, where "Might Makes Right." Phelan's illustrations heighten the contrast. Mel is drawn deftly, lightly; Bors is a barrel-chested Cro-Magnon with a bald skull and angry glower. The assumed end to the story would be Mel taming her master and Bors softening in turn - the child become parent. But Phelan stays true to Bors's stubbornness: Even after she saves his life, earning his trust and respect, he abandons her at quest's end: "I cannot have a girl as a squire. It just... it just isn't done." The moment is jarring and cleareyed, reminding us that not every parent can change. Sometimes, family must be found elsewhere. GIVEN THE DEARTH of good stewards, it's natural to envy the two best friends in sanity & TALLULAH (Disney-Hyperion, 240 pp., $21.99; ages 8 to 12), who are blessed with full sets of parents. Molly Brooks's high-octane graphic novel charts the girls' attempt to bioengineer a three-headed cat on their space station home. When "Princess Sparkle" escapes, Tallulah and Sanity go hunting for their new pet, only to suss out a bigger vermin problem that could torpedo their space station. Mirroring Healy's plot, where the initial quest is a red herring for a larger crisis, Brooks diverges in making Tallulah's mother and Sanity's father patient yet strict, sensible yet encouraging, all the while flawlessly managing a space station meltdown. In one of Brooks's sharp, well-paced panels, which juggle action set pieces with helter-skelter angles and onomatopoeic effects, Tallulah's Latina mother redoes her own hair band after teleporting herself, while in another, Sanity's African-American father interrupts his station-saving to make sure his daughter eats dinner. Sanity and Tallulah have no resentment against their parents, no building rebellion; their goal is to find Franken-kitty and keep her alive, despite their parents' threats to destroy the lab cat once she's captured. Given how tempered and loving the guardians are, the cat's fate never seems in doubt. But if such enviable parenting drains a deeper threat from the novel, keeping the girls' mischief well-bounded, Brooks restores the balance by amping up the clear and present danger, forcing both families to work as a unit, suggesting that when it comes to the future, parent and child relying on each other just might be a new frontier. SOMAN CHAINANI is the author of the School for Good and Evil series. His next book, "A Crystal of Time," will be published in the spring.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In 1883, the Inventor's Guild rules all scientific progress, and the upcoming World's Fair will showcase many new gadgets designed by the guild's members, including Edison, Tesla, and Bell. Molly Pepper's mother, Cassandra, hopes to grab a spot and impress the guild with her Icarus Chariot, a flying machine, and when her spot is given away to yet another man, Molly decides to break into the guild and do some minor sabotage to win her mother's spot back. Instead, she stumbles upon Bell's assistant, Emmett Lee, and discovers a plot to overtake humanity with evil robots at the World's Fair. The two team up with Cassandra to find proof that one of the world's beloved men of science and invention may actual be seeking to rule to world! Healy has created a steampunk-inspired alternative history featuring some of the greatest minds in invention (including a number of women) in this series opener. An author's note is included to help readers differentiate between fact and fiction in the story. A solid choice for adventurous readers.--Lindsey Tomsu Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this timely historical adventure set in 1883 New York City, a female duo attempts to break into a male-dominated field and stumbles across a fiendish plan concocted by a ruthless mad scientist. All that 12-year-old Molly Pepper wants is for her brilliant mother, Cassandra, to be accepted by the Inventors' Guild and its leaders-Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. While trying to secure themselves an exhibition space in the upcoming World's Fair, Molly and Cassandra discover that Bell is plotting to destroy the city with a secret army of robotic death machines. With the help of Bell's assistant, Emmett, the mother-daughter team joins up with the Mothers of Invention to thwart Bell's (or is it Edison's?) evil schemes. Plot twists and banter hit at breakneck speeds in this heartfelt yet tongue-in-cheek look at the tumultuous Age of Invention, and its focus on two often marginalized groups-immigrants and women-allows for relevant social commentary. While Healy (The Hero's Guide series) takes a few liberties with history, his inclusion of real inventors may inspire further reading about their lives and contributions. Ages 8-12. Agent: Cheryl Pientka, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-The author of the "Hero's Guide" books offers the first in a new historical series trilogy focusing on the age of invention in the late 19th century. During that time, the world was in awe of Thomas Edison's electric light bulb and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Edison and Bell appear in the story alongside would-be inventors Cassandra Pepper and her 12-year-old daughter Molly, who create unique machines and gadgets in the back of their pickle store. Both are infuriated when their spot in the Inventor's Guild at the 1883 World's Fair in New York City is taken from them and instead awarded to a man. Frustrated, the duo breaks into the Inventor's Guild offices and happen upon what looks to be a "dastardly plot" to injure the thousands of people who will be attending the World's Fair. The author's appended notes comparing the facts and fiction of the story are valuable for historical context. VERDICT Readers who enjoy nonstop action will want to give this new series a try.-Anne Jung-Mathews, Plymouth State University, NH © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An inventor's daughter must stop a plot targeting New York City's World's Fair in 1883.Molly Pepper and her widowed mother, Cassandra Pepper, both white, live in their pickle shop while Cassandra creates inventions in the back room. They want to debut Cassandra's flying machine at the 1883 World Fair, but the Inventor's Guild, which limits its membership to men, has taken all the exhibition spots. A madcap scheme to find a way into the fair results in an impromptu break-in at the guild's building, where Molly meets Chinese immigrant Emmett Leeand where she discovers evidence that indicates that Alexander Graham Bell is scheming to attack the fair with a death machine! Molly and Cassandra conclude that the best way to get the attention that Cassandra and her inventions deserve is for them to become heroes by saving the fair, leading them on a ridiculous journey packed with chase scenes, red herrings, mobsters, monologue-prone villains, and inventions. Besides famous real-life male inventors, important female inventors, including African-American Sarah Goode, also appear, in a secret cabal with a punny (and inevitable) name. The humor ranges from clever wordplay to running gags and cartoonish slapstick. Weaving throughout the outlandish mystery and entertaining wackiness, period gender and racial discrimination experienced by women and Chinese people are mined for tension. Molly's unintentional microaggressions and Emmett's status in the face of the Chinese Exclusion Act are both timely elements.A zany, rollicking series opener. (author's note) (Historical fantasy. 8-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
