|
Publisher:
Science2Discover, Inc. |
Release
Date: January 1, 2004 |
ISBN:
0-9673811-6-9 |
Awards:
|
Format
Reviewed: Softcover |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Children’s Fiction – Mystery/Thriller –
Age 8-13 |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Kristin Johnson |
Reviewer
Notes: Reviewer, Kristin Johnson, released her second book;
CHRISTMAS COOKIES ARE FOR GIVING, co-written with Mimi Cummins,
in October 2003. Her third book, ORDINARY MIRACLES: My Incredible
Spiritual, Artistic and Scientific Journey, co-written with
Sir Rupert A.L. Perrin, M.D., is now available from Publish
America. |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
|
Menace
in the Walls
By N.L. Eskeland
Memo
to guys: Smart is cool. Also, be nice to your sister. Those are
two important lessons, refreshingly not delivered with a cafeteria
lady’s heavy hand, in N.L. Eskeland’s “Erin Brockovich
meets Michael Crichton” thriller for the preteen set, Menace
in the Walls, a fictional account of a true and controversial
medical horror story from the 1990s.
While
we’re all panicking about the flu, mad cow disease, and so
forth, we’d do well to learn from history, especially when
it is well and wisely written with a deft touch that proves children’s
books aren’t just for kids anymore. Not only that, our future
generations are brighter, less video-game-addicted, and more inclined
to listen to their parents than the latest pop star (parents really
are the anti-drug!). In addition, today’s kids have a powerful
sense of right and wrong.
The
“wrong” portrayed in Menace in the Walls is corporate
greed and research funding versus the lives of innocent children.
Moreover, we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t
for those meddling kids!
The
meddling kids in question are the Harry Potter-looking bespectacled
Joshua Keegan and his firecracker younger sister Kelley. To Joshua,
Kelly is particularly meddlesome. However, investigating children’s
deaths from lung hemorrhage linked to the mysterious mold Stachybotrys
has a way of bringing siblings together, especially when Joshua
and Kelley find their lives in danger.
After
Joshua’s strong, intelligent doctor mother gets him a job
at a lab run by her sinister colleague Doctor Channing, Joshua,
in the tradition of nosy kids, starts poking in the computer files
and braves secondhand smoke to visit one of the bereaved relatives
of several children taken mysteriously ill with the same ailment
(the revelation that smoking can aggravate the children’s
condition is a gentle, subtle message). When Kelley accidentally
puts Joshua at risk through sibling rivalry, the two must team up
to unravel the case. It is not a “kids versus adults”
story either: Joshua’s parents, as well as a kindly researcher
named Dr. Tang, prove to be great allies and protectors. In this
moral, faith-filled, intelligent page-turner, Eskeland makes science
cool again. |