As a digital subscriber, you’ll receive unlimited access to Horn Book web exclusives and extensive archives, as well as access to our highly searchable Guide/Reviews Database.
To access other site content, visit The Horn Book homepage.
To continue you need an active subscription to hbook.com.
Subscribe now to gain immediate access to everything hbook.com has to offer, as well as our highly searchable Guide/Reviews Database, which contains tens of thousands of short, critical reviews of books published in the United States for young people.
Thank you for registering. To have the latest stories delivered to your inbox, select as many free newsletters as you like below.
No thanks. Return to article
281 pp.
| Knopf
| May, 2012
|
TradeISBN 978-0-375-87029-3$16.99
|
LibraryISBN 978-0-375-97029-0$19.99
(2)
4-6
Illustrated by
Martin Brown.
Readers have a dual romp with two bundled novellas, Thunderbolt's Waxwork and The Gas-Fitters' Ball, first published in the UK in the 1990s. Set in Victorian London, the stories feature a neighborhood band of children fancying themselves detectives. Both madcap adventures contain lots of characters and lots of plot, with all coming together in complicated, satisfying endings.
Reviewer: Betty Carter
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
May, 2012
97 pp.
| Scholastic
| September, 2006
|
TradeISBN 0-439-87786-5$10.99
(4)
4-6
Illustrated by
Martin Brown.
This book has a deliberately sensational emphasis on barbaric details. Cruelty, torture, killing, and other villainous behaviors are described and illustrated to appeal to youngsters' sense of the ghoulish. Realistically awful factual material is made goofy by the cartoon art. An epilogue asks readers to ponder history's lessons.