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Book Review: I Know What UFO Did Last Summer by Kevin Garone

cover art for I Know What UFO Did Last Summer

I Know What UFO Did Last Summer by Kevin Garone

Temor Press, April 2025 (not yet released)

ISBN: 9798991328401

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org

 

Part adventure, part sci-fi, and all childlike charm, this book is for young readers, but perfect for young-at-heart adults.  With its irresistible characters, it’s a reminder of a time when you were young and could believe in anything with all your heart, no matter how outlandish it might have been.  Simply put, this is magic.

 

It’s the three pre-teen lead characters, Marvin (code name: Gold Leader), Jace (code name: Baller One) and Nora (code name: Space Cadet) that make the story such a joy.  The author clearly knows kids and how to write them. His insights are so good, you’ll wonder if the book was written by a teen with advanced writing skills.  The main character, Marvin, truly believes aliens will one day infiltrate the earth, so he spends his spare time searching and preparing for them, along with his less enthusiastic friends.  Jace and Nora don’t really buy into Marvin’s obsession, but searching the night sky during campouts and building an anti-UFO catapult is fun for them.  That’s what buddies do: go along with the ideas of each other, in the name of friendship.

 

Things change when the three of them do find something unusual in the woods. It isn’t actual aliens, but it does somewhat fit into Marvin’s beliefs.  The author wisely doesn’t hide the fact that it isn’t an extraterrestrial invasion, but he has Marvin play his role to the end, and that’s where a lot of the story’s charm comes from.  It’s hilarious when adults in the book occasionally ask “what’s wrong with this kid?”” when Marvin accuses them of being from another planet.  The answer is, nothing at all.  He isn’t written as crazy or stupid, but as a kid who believes, wholeheartedly, in aliens coming to earth.  It makes the character interactions between the three kids more powerful than a laser bolt from Han Solo’s blaster, as Jace and Nora are perfect foils to Marvin.  Jace has fun with the whole alien thing, but would rather play basketball, while Nora is new and town and just needs a friend.

 

The storyline is quite good: call it sci-fi light.  There are a few weird creatures and a bit of teleporting, plus, of course, an EEEEVIL mastermind behind it all.  There are some stock elements, but they are used extremely well.  A few characters do get chomped by something, but nothing messy.  This book is perfect for grades four through seven, roughly. (I’m basing that on my teaching experience)

 

However, since this review is mainly for adults, the bottom line is, this is perfect for those who haven’t let the world dampen the joy of imagination.  It’s a good reminder that magic of a sort still does exist, if you still believe.  Often, that magic is found in the friendships you make, as the book’s characters discover during their adventure.   Most definitely recommended!

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on January 19, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: Curse of the Boggin (The Library, Book 1) by D.J. MacHale


Curse of the Boggin (The Library, Book 1) by D.J. MacHale

Random House Books for Young Readers, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1101932537

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, audio CD

 

Marcus O’Mara was an ordinary troublemaking kid headed to detention until a ghost in pajamas started haunting him, and the words “surrender the key” appeared in shattered glass in the school hallway. Suspended from school for accidentally blowing out all the computers in the computer lab while in unsupervised detention, he researches the term on the Internet and finds the obituary of the man who has been haunting him, and decides to sneak out of the house to find the man’s family. When Marcus arrives at the man’s household,  his wife recognizes Marcus, and tells him that both her husband and his birth parents were paranormal investigators who died under mysterious circumstances. Her husband had been holding onto something left for Marcus by his parents: a key that can open any door into a library of unfinished stories. The librarian tells Marcus it is up to him to finish the chain of events that will lead to the end of the ghost’s story, which means capturing the spirit who led to his death: the boggin. The boggin is a spirit with the power of illusion whose chief purpose is to cause fear and dread, and it is the one demanding that Marcus “surrender the key”. With the help of his friends Lu and Theo, Marcus must find a way to defeat and imprison the boggin and prevent it from getting the key to the library.

This is the first book in a series, and provides the setup for further volumes that the author says can be read in any order as stand-alone adventures. And they are adventures: from the prologue on, the action rarely stops. MacHale’s economy of words means the story moves along, but there’s enough description to create appropriately frightening atmosphere (much of which is related to weather, such as lightning strikes and thick fog). A spirit who can create completely effective illusions gives the author a lot of latitude to work with in terms of creating some pretty nasty experiences for Marcus and his friends.  As in many suspense and mystery novels for middle-graders, there are a lot of unlikely coincidences and character tropes (MacHale plays with these, but the physically adventurous risk-taker and the cautious, nerdy skeptic are pretty standard) and the ending is predictable, but I love the concept of the Library! Kids looking for a mildly scary, suspenseful ride, with plenty of ghosts and spirits (and spiders), will enjoy this.

 

Editor’s note:  Curse of the Boggin is a nominee for the 2019-2020 Young Hoosier Book Award in the grades 4-6 category.

Posted on September 13, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Phantom Hour (Babysitting Nightmares #2) by Kat Shepherd

The Phantom Hour (Babysitting Nightmares #2) by Kat Shepherd

Imprint, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1250156990

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

This summer has been a great one for discovering books with all kinds of girls, from reckless risktakers to insecure new girls, facing their fears– literally.  What a victory for representation, am I right? I wanted to make a list, but I would have spent hours on it.

Babysitting Nightmares by Kat Shepherd is a series I want to see succeed like crazy. I encountered the second book, The Phantom Hour, at the library, and it is so much fun! Apparently there’s a third out now, The Ghost Light, so I’ll be back at the library soon.  The book centers on four friends, all seventh graders, with very different interests and backgrounds. Clio is the leader,  and the book is worth reading, if for no other reason, than to encounter her aunt, Kawanna, who runs a costume shop called Creature Feature located in a storefront on Coffin Street, wears a Godzilla print skirt, hosts horror movie nights for the girls, and drives them where they need to go on their secret missions without actually interfering. Doesn’t she sound like someone you’d want to be friends with?

If you were thinking “this sounds like The Babysitters Club dressed up with ghosts”, you’d be wrong. While there is a standalone storyline in this book, there’s also a thread that connects it to the first book and on into the third. In the first book, the four girls had to enter the Nightmare Realm to retrieve one of their charges who had been replaced with a changeling,  but apparently the Nightmare Realm is not done with them. So as they go about their daily lives and babysitting jobs, they also have to contend with containing the Nightmare Realm. In The Phantom Hour,  Clio takes a job babysitting for the Lee family, who have just moved into the abandoned Plunkett Mansion. Of course the mansion has a supernatural resident, and it’s up to Clio, with help from her friends, to figure out what’s going on and resolve it.  Shepherd does a nice job not just of portraying a diverse group of girlfriends (including three girls of color) who really support each other. The little girl Clio is babysitting is hearing impaired and she’s also represented respectfully.

While most hardcore horror lovers might not get much of a scare out of this book, it has some genuinely creepy and frightening moments– the ghost in the story is not a friendly one.  This series is a nice change from books about girlfriends who are crushing on boys and tearing each other down. It’s not every day you see a positive depiction of four smart, geeky girlfriends taking on and defeating the supernatural, and this one is tops.  Highly recommended.

 

Posted on August 7, 2019 by , Reply
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