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Zoobreak by Gordon Korman

fernfolio — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:40:07 +0000

After she helped them successfully retrieve a priceless baseball card from the guy who swindled it from them, best friends Griffin Bing and Ben Slovak feel they have to help Savannah Drysdale track down her missing pet capuchin monkey. However a class trip to a floating zoo docked at a nearby nature preserve solves one mystery and poses another. Cleo, the missing monkey, is locked into a cage in the zoo and the zoo’s owner adamantly refuses to admit that the little creature might belong to Savannah, so that problem becomes how Griffith and his friends can rescue her before the floating zoo sails away.
Known as the Man With the Plan for his elaborate schemes, Griffin calls in all of the kids who worked on the baseball card heist, and begins work on operation Zoobreak. Along with Pitch Benson, who can climb any tree or fence, Melissa Dukakis, an electronic genius, and Logan Kellerman, aspiring actor, Griffin, Ben and Savannah reconnoitre the old boat that houses the zoo, check out the walls and fences surrounding the nature preserve, post miniature surveillance cameras, and chat up Klaus, the beefy security guard who lives on board. Armed with a plan that, he is certain, covers every possible contingency, Griffin and his team sneak in the zoo in the middle of the night, and then watch as everything goes hilariously wrong.
Savannah, who is Cedarville’s acknowledged authority on animals, becomes incensed when she realises just how bad the living conditions of the zoo’s exhibits really are, and insists that Griffin and his team remove not only Cleo, her monkey, but all of the other animals on display. The six kids have to find places to stash the forty rescued animals, and keep them safe, and hidden, until Savannah’s friend, Dr. Kathleen Alford, curator of the Long Island Zoo, returns from a trip to equatorial Africa. Unfortunately, their animal liberation project has made the news, and the police open an investigation. But, worse still, Mr. “Nasty” Nastase, the zoo’s owner, seems to be on their tail!
Written by Gordon Korman, Zoobreak is an clever, funny, and action-packed adventure about a group of grade-six misfits who know the importance of friendship. Sequel to Swindle, let’s hope there are more stories about Griffin and Bing, and their friends, ahead!
FernFolio Editor

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

fernfolio — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:00:41 +0000

ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES? The ad, which appears in the local newspaper, catches Reynard Muldoon’s eye. The eleven-year old, who is constantly taunted and ridiculed by the other children because of his exceptional intelligence, has completed every class and read every book in the Stonetown Orphanage. Even his kind tutor, Miss Perumal, admits that there is nothing further she can teach him.
So with Miss Perumal’s encouragement, Reynie replies to the ad, and is directed to a downtown building to complete the first of three examinations that test both his intellectual skills, and his moral fibre. He meets the brilliant and timid George “Sticky” Washington, also eleven, Kate Wetherall, twelve, whose has spent years with the circus and can measure any distance with a look, and the small and belligerently obstinate Constance Contraire. Along with them, he is taken to meet Mr. Benedict, an odd, genial and green plaid-clad genius who offers them the chance to become secret agents, and carry out a very dangerous mission whose outcome quite possibly will decide the future of every human on Earth. They become the Mysterious Benedict Society.
Mr. Benedict and his team explain to the children that they have detected and are tracking strange messages being transmitted subliminally during regular television and radio broadcasts. The messages, which are delivered by children, seem to consist of nonsensical statements … THE MISSING AREN’T MISSING, THEY’RE ONLY DEPARTED… POISON APPLES. POISON WORMS… The messages vary, but they appear to cloud the mind of just about everyone who hears them. The international Emergency that has dominated news headlines for months seems to have been created by these messages, and Mr. Benedict can only speculate, and worry, about what the ultimate purpose of these messages might be.
Mr. Benedict’s team has tracked the messages to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, founded by a Dutch scientist named Ledroptha Curtain, which is situated on Nomansan Island, just across from Stonetown Harbor. The four children are enrolled as students at the Institute and soon find themselves learning a series bewilderingly contradictory school rules, and learning lessons that, at least initially, appear to make no sense whatsoever. But the members of the Mysterious Benedict Society meet in secret after lights out every night, to discuss their findings, and to report those findings to Mr. Benedict’s team by flashlight and Morse code, and slowly, horrifyingly, start to make sense of Ledroptha Curtain’s plans.
The Mysterious Benedict Society is a thrilling adventure story about four solitary and abandoned children who discover that, by pooling their talents and working together, they can achieve the impossible. It is a tale full of mazes, puzzles and riddles that will have the reader working hard along side Reynie, Sticky, Kate and Constance to figure things out before it’s too late. Trenton Lee Stewart’s book is the first in a series of (almost) three titles, which include The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, and the forthcoming The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
FernFolio Editor

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

fernfolio — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:59:13 +0000

Twelve-year old Percy Jackson seems to be plagued by bad luck. Constantly in trouble at his upper New York state boarding school, hounded by a nasty classmate named Nancy Bobofit, and struggling with both dyslexia and ADHD, it’s like he’s an accident waiting for a place to happen. And it happens inside one of the galleries at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Percy and his classmates are visiting on a field trip. Attacked by Mrs. Dodds, his math teacher, he finds himself killing her with a sword tossed to him by Mr. Brunner, his wheelchair-bound latin teacher. Mrs. Dodds’ body turns into dust before Percy’s stunned eyes and, stranger still, no one, including Mr. Brunner, remembers anything about the incident or the math teacher.
In the weeks following the trip to Metropolitan Museum of Art, Percy’s marks plummet from C- to F, as he relives Mrs. Dodds’ death, and wonders if he’s lost his mind. Even his friend Grover, an awkward, rather hesitant kid made lame by muscular disease, can’t cheer him up or help him to put the nightmares behind him. Then, just as the school year is winding up, Percy decides to pay a visit to Mr. Brunner’s office, and overhears the latin teacher in conversation with Grover. They are talking about him, about the summer solstice, about protecting him, and about keeping him in the dark just a little longer.
When Grover turns up on the same Greyhound bus bound for New York City, after the school year ends, and makes it clear that he wants to escort his friend safely home, Percy gets mad and ditches him as soon as they reach the bus station. He heads home to the apartment shared by his loving mother, Sally, who works in a candy store but dreams of becoming a writer, and his loutish stepfather, Gabe, who lives to play poker, verbally abuse his wife, and make Percy’s life unbearable.
Fortunately, Sally has organized a weekend away for just her and Percy to a cottage at the end of Long Island Sound. There they spend an idyllic day at the beach, a place both of them love because it is where Sally met and fell in love with Percy’s father, who was lost at sea when the boy was only a baby. But nightfall brings a bad storm and an anxious Grover, who demands to know if Percy has told his mother about the incident with Mrs. Dodd. When she learns of it, a very alarmed Sally packs things up and the three of them head off into the storm to get Percy to safety at a nearby summer camp.
Just as they reach the camp, Sally’s car swerves off the road, and Percy and Grover are injured. Sally orders Percy to get to the camp, and takes off through the storm to intercept the creature that has been sent to stop him. But Percy cannot leave Grover behind, and manages to drag him from the car. Together, they reach the camp’s boundaries, where Percy collapses. When he awakens, two days later, Percy discovers that he has lost all that he has ever loved, and that most everything his mother told him about his father was a lie.
Camp Half-Blood, where he now finds himself, is a safe place, and a training facility, for the children of Greek gods. These gods are fond of entering into relationships with humans and the half-blood children that result from these unions are both blessed by special abilities and cursed by the dangers that their unusual parentage attracts. Percy is at first sceptical about this revelation, certain that his father was human, but Grover and Mr. Brunner, who are both far more than Percy could ever have imagined, assure him that his very ability to enter the camp grounds is proof of his parentage. What no one knows, however, is exactly which of the Greek gods fathered Percy, so he is placed in the cabin of the Hermes, the god of travellers, until his parentage can be determined. The boy settles into camp life, and rapidly finds himself involved in a variety of camp activities, such as metalwork, where you can forge your own sword, arts and crafts, where you can sandblast a Grecian statue, ancient Greek lessons, archery, foot racing, wrestling, and capture the flag. But just as he begins to enjoy his new life, Percy is attacked and the camp directors realize that the boy has an enemy inside the camp.
Concerned that he is no longer safe at Camp Half-Blood, the directors send Percy to the Oracle of Delphi, who prophecies that the boy will find what was stolen and see it safely returned. It is then that Percy learns that Zeus’ thunderbolt, the symbol of his power, has been stolen and that he, Percy Jackson, is the prime suspect in the crime. If a terrible war between the gods is to be averted, and Percy is to clear his name, the thunderbolt must be found and returned to Zeus, and by the summer solstice, now only days away. Accompanied by his friend Grover, and Annabeth, a fellow camper who eyes the boy with considerable suspicion, Percy sets off on a quest that will test his mettle and pit him and his companions against greatest and most terrible monsters of Greek mythology.
Written by Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief is the first of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, which currently number five. Steeped in mythology, yet action-packed and full of tense moments interspersed with humour, this novel is sure to appeal to boys and girls, and eager and reluctant readers, alike!
FernFolio Editor

Beware, Pirates! by Frieda Wishinsky

fernfolio — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:01:18 +0000

Emily Bing is happy to meet Matt Martinez, the boy who walks up her front walk to say hello soon after she and her family move into her Great-Aunt Miranda’s old house. Matt wants to know if the house is haunted, which it isn’t, but it does contain an odd little room at the top of a tower that is filled with strange objects, including an old wooden sled. The sled, a Canadian Flyer, is a gift to Emily from her great-aunt and bears a maple leaf on which some mysterious words appear, like a magic spell, to carry Matt and Emily away on an adventure to Canada’s Far North and the second voyage to Canada by one of European’s most famous explorers.
Matt and Emily find themselves aboard the explorer’s sailing ship where they meet sailors who act more like pirates and its rather ill-tempered captain, Martin Frobisher. Believed to be stowaways, the kids are put to work scrubbing the decks before they catch sight of an Innu boy paddling a small boat near the sailing vessel. Soon they have clambered down a rope into young Minik’s umiak, and learn that the boy is looking for his friend, Irniq, who has been kidnapped by Frobisher and his men.
Written by Frieda Wishinsky, Beware, Pirates! is the first of the Canadian Flyer Adventures, stories about Matt and Emily’s adventures through this country’s past aboard the magical wooden sled. These books will appeal to readers from grades 2 to 5, and offer a lot of information about Canada’s history.
FernFolio Editor

Swindle by Gordon Korman

fernfolio — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:58:51 +0000

Eleven-year old Griffin Bing is the Man with the Plan, the kid who can figure out a solution to every problem. But his parents are facing a financial disaster that seems to be beyond even his organizational cunning. His inventor father has come up with the SmartPick, a device that is sure to be a winner, and has quit his job and invested all of the family’s savings into developing a prototype. Too bad he hasn’t managed to find any investors; too bad an empty bank account has forced the Bings to put their house up for sale.
When Griffin comes up with the idea of camping out in a derelict, and possibly haunted, house on the eve of its demolition, only his best friend Ben shows up. With Ben curled up fast asleep in his sleeping bag, Griffin sets out to explore the old house and discovers an old baseball card hidden in the drawer of an abandoned desk. Closer examination of the card reveals that the picture on it is of Babe Ruth, one of the great legends of baseball, and Griffin starts to hope that, just maybe, the card will be worth enough to get his parents out of their financial mess. He takes the card to Palomino’s Emporium of Collectibles and Memorabilia, where the proprietor, one S. Wendell Palomino, informs him that he’s got a 1960’s reproduction of a Babe Ruth original baseball card and that it’s only worth about a hundred dollars, but offers him $120. Pocketing his half of the money, Griffin regrets that he cannot even give the $60 to his parents, since they will learn of his camp out in the old house.
Then Griffin happens to see a news item on television, and recognizes S. Wendell Palomino, who is announcing the discovery of a rare and extremely valuable Babe Ruth baseball card, which he plans to sell at auction where, estimates suggest, the card will sell for more than $1 million. It is then that Griffin Bing realizes that he’s been had, swindled out of a fortune, money that his family desperately needs if they are going to hang onto their house. With an initially very reluctant Ben, Griffin begins work on the most ambitious plan of his life, that of stealing his baseball card back from Palomino.
Vicious guard dogs, safes, alarm systems, nosy neighbours, directionally challenged couriers, the police, Griffin and his team of eleven-year old specialists take them all on and create the perfect plan. Or very nearly….
Swindle is a fast-paced adventure that combines moments of signature Gordon Korman humour with the bone-deep satisfaction of getting back at the bullies, be they classmates, crooked store owners, or city hall!
FernFolio Editor

Newton and the Time Machine by Michael McGowan

fernfolio — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:05:54 +0000

In his treetop scientific lab, eleven-year old Newton has finally completed his latest invention, a time machine. Genius younger brother of a set of overbearing and sports-mad quadruplets, Newton has become accustomed to being picked on by his older brothers, who ridicule his scrawny frame, his geeky manner, and his complete lack of interest in soccer. And he’s also resigned to the fact that, as long as his brothers continue to collect sports trophies, his parents aren’t going to notice or appreciate his intellectual prowess. Fortunately, Newton has the undivided support of Max, his best friend, who is as loyal as he is nervous, Commander Joe, his live action figure, and Queen Gertrude, the ruler of a kingdom of giants, and her husband, Prince Harold.
Unfortunately, although he has the niggling impression that he might have forgotten something in the construction of his time machine, his friends, Queen Gertrude and Prince Harold, are eager to try it. When they and the machine disappear, Newton is afraid he might have killed them or, possibly worse still, trapped them permanently in the distant past. The sudden arrival of Prince Raphael, younger brother of Queen Gertrude and general ne’er-do-well, puts the giant kingdom at risk, and makes the immediate location and retrieval of the royal couple an urgent priority.
Newton’s old friend, Witch Hazel, believes that the time machine, and Newton’s two giant friend, have been stolen by leprechauns, who plan to use his invention to carry out the greatest, and most dastardly, theft of all time!
A sequel to Newton and the Giant, Newton and the Time Machine is a clever and funny adventure about a boy whose brilliance hasn’t stifled his friendships or his imagination!
FernFolio Editor

Peril at Pier Nine by Penny Draper

fernfolio — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:00:00 +0000

For the boys who move at the end of the June from houses in the city to their cottages on the Toronto Islands’ Ward Island, that summer of 1949 promises to be magical. Freed from the demands of school, the everyday world of city life, and the cautious fretting of their parents, Jack, Donnie, Dougie and Beans roam the islands on their bicycles, have overnight camping trips accompanied by the requisite ghost stories, play baseball, serenade one another, and the occasional admiring girl, on their ukes, and sail the harbour in their small sailboats.
Fourteen-year old Jack is the undisputed leader of the group. A tall, striking boy with a fiercely competitive streak, he is an expert sailor, more at home on the water, even, than on land. He has a fondness for playing pranks, and is always up for a game, always eager to try some new foolishness. Though Jack is frequently admonished to think before he acts, his impulsiveness often leads him into trouble with the adults of Ward’s Island.
However, Jack has a dream; he wants to become captain of a laker, one of the great boats that ply the Great Lakes. He hopes that he can impress Captain Clapp, a retired laker captain living on Ward’s Island, with his knowledge of sailing and the lakes, as well as with his good judgement and sense of responsibility, so that Captain Clapp will help him get a position on a training ship. But, while the captain readily acknowledges that Jack has an almost instinctive understanding of the wind and the waves, he finds the boy to be rather less than responsible. When Jack leads the rest of the boys in an afternoon of fun that damages an Island landmark, his father confiscates his sailboat, and the boy figures he has kissed good-bye to his chance to impress Captain Clapp.
When disaster strikes right in Toronto Harbour, Jack rushes to help in the rescue effort. Through that harrowing experience, the boy proves that, underneath the bluster and bravado, he does have what it takes to command a laker.
Told against the backdrop on one of Toronto’s greatest marine disasters, Peril at Pier Nine does a splendid job of bringing the experiences of Jack and his friends, that summer of 1949, vividly to life.
FernFolio Editor

Chocolate River Rescue by Jennifer McGrath Kent

fernfolio — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:33:15 +0000

Sent outside to enjoy the wintery weather, Shawn Mahoney and his younger brother, Craig, along with Shawn’s best friend, Tony, wander over to the new bridge built near their homes in Riverview. The bridge, which spans the Petitcoudiac river, links their town with the city of Moncton, New Brunswick.
Standing on the bridge watching the river below, which looks like a lumpy chocolate milkshake, with its brown water and chunks of ice and slush, Tony spies a Manga Warriors card lying on the ice under the bridge and soon the three boys slip and slide their way down to claim it. Wrestling playfully, they look up to see a police officer running toward them pointing and yelling, but cannot imagine what he might be trying to tell them until they hear a crack. It is then that they realize that the ice they are standing on it about to break away from the bank. Before they can make it to safety, a second crack sends the ice and the boys onto the river. Though the police officer tries to rescue them further down river, the boys spin rapidly beyond his reach, and the ice they are perched on heads toward the Bay of Fundy.
Nearby, Petra prepares to spend her birthday skiing with her uncle Daryl, a fire-fighter. When they pick up the emergency message on the police scanner in Daryl’s truck, the two join the rescue efforts, hoping to be able to put to use the zodiac inflatable boat that Daryl happens to have on a trailer on the back of his truck. But, when they reach an access point where they can launch the inflatable, Daryl is badly injured when the boat falls on his arm. With her uncle being cared for by a passing motorist, Petra decides that she must carry out the rescue attempt on her own. She gets the boat into the icy waters and heads out into the river in search of the missing boys.
As darkness falls and the temperature begins to dip, the four kids must draw upon all of their strength and ingenuity to survive until Search and Rescue can find them.
Based on a true story, Chocolate River Rescue is a fast-paced adventure that will have you cheering for its young heroes!
FernFolio Editor

The Third Eye by Mahtab Narsimhan

fernfolio — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:00:04 +0000

While the other people in their village celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, Tara and her seven-year old brother Suraj sit watching from the front step of the family hut, mourning the anniversary of their mother’s disappearance. One year earlier, the kind and beautiful Parvati had crept to Tara before dawn and told her that she had to go away for a while. When they awake, hours later, Tara and Suraj and their father, Shiv, discover that not only has Parvati gone, but her father, Parbala, the village’s powerful healer, has disappeared as well.
The year that follows is a very difficult one for the two children. Not only must they cope with the loss of their mother and grandfather, but with the unexpected remarriage of their father to Kali, a unpleasant woman whose doting love of her spoilt daughter, Layla, is in stark contrast to her cruelty toward Tara and Suraj. With their formerly loving and affectionate father suddenly cold and remote, and Kali treating them like servants in their own home, Tara watches with growing alarm as her younger brother grows thin and sad. She begins to think that she must take Suraj and set off into the forest that surround the village in search of their missing mother and grandfather.
However a new danger lurks. The villagers have begun to whisper that the forest is inhabited by Vetalas, the undead, who prey upon those who venture there alone. As men start disappearing and fear mounts in the village, a stranger appears, claiming that he can save them from the Vetalas. Zarku, as he calls himself, possesses a third eye, in the middle of his forehead, that allows him to see into the hearts and minds of all he meets. Though several of the villagers voice their concern about his arrival, Zarku is rapidly appointed as the village’s new healer. Yet Tara senses that he is evil and realizes that finding her mother and grandfather may be the only way to save the village.
Tara’s desperate quest takes her into the forest and then up into the mountains, where she meets Lord Yama, the God of Death, and must undertake a harrowing voyage underground to find the fountain from which flows the Water of Life.
Part adventure, part fairy tale, The Third Eye is a marvellous story about one young girl’s discovery that true strength lies within and that, with a pure heart, all is possible.
The Third Eye won the 2009 Silver Birch prize for fiction.
FernFolio editor

The Castaways by Iain Lawrence

fernfolio — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:47:17 +0000

Tom Tin and his four teenaged companions find themselves in desperate straits; aboard a stripped down, lumbering hulk of a steamboat lost on the ocean in the southern hemisphere, half a world away from England, and rapidly running out of water, food and fuel to run the steam engine. It seems they have escaped from an island inhabited by cannibals only to die of dehydration at sea.
When a great three-masted sailing ship appears on the horizon, Tom is at first filled with relief but, when he describes the approaching vessel to Measley, his blind and yet oddly insightful friend seems convinced that this ship is, in fact, the famous Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship whose captain is doomed to sail the seas for all time plucking shipwrecked sailors from the ocean. Tom, Measley, Weedle, Penny and Boggis climb aboard to find that they seem to be alone on the ship. Alone, save for the ghostly groans of its phantom crew.
The boys take shelter on the ship’s deck, too repelled by the stink of rotting fruit and by the accompanying clouds of fruit flies to explore the rest of the vessel. True to Measley’s dark predictions, they find themselves unable to turn the ship from its southern course and soon find themselves in the iceberg filled waters off Antarctica. It is there that the ship comes upon two men standing back to back upon an ice floe, fighting off vicious fish that are throwing themselves out of the water at the pair.
As soon as they come aboard the men, who identify themselves as Mr. Beezley and Mr. Moyle, take charge of the ship and set the boys to work unfouling the rigging as they prepare to lay a course for America where, rumours have it, gold has been found. But it soon becomes obvious that Beezley and Moyle’s plans for becoming wealthy do not include the five boys, and that they know far more about the ship, and its cargo, than they have been letting on.
The third of a trilogy that includes The Convicts, and The Cannibals, The Castaways is a breathtaking adventure full of excitement and danger. Lawrence’s deft descriptions bring the sea and the great sailing ship to life; the plot will have you wanting to read ahead, just to find out how it all ends!
FernFolio Editor