Caleb really wants the special edition of his favorite book, Castle Quest, but he still needs $10. Jax, his best friend, wants money for a new soccer net and has just gotten a refrigerator. Which gives Caleb an idea... they could build box forts to earn the money! They enlist a neighbor, Eddie, who is known to be good at signs and art and get started.
They get boxes from their neighbor, Mrs. Mohan, and their first client is Analise, who wants a pink castle for her birthday. But they discover a business isn't as easy as they thought. Luckily, Mrs. Mohan's granddaughter Kiara has more experience with design and is ready to help.
Together, the four of them work out various issues and challenges and finally they successfully build their first fort and have a satisfied client!
Black and white pen drawings are scattered throughout the book. Caleb and Jax both present white, their neighbor Eddie is black, and Kiara appears to be South Asian from her appearance on the cover and the mention of her grandmother cooking ladoos.
This is a Quix book, Aladdin's answer to Scholastic's Branches, and includes a list of characters at the beginning, words and sentences in bold (some appear to be more difficult vocabulary, others appear to be random), a glossary, questions, and a STEM project to make your own drawbridge.
Verdict: I would have liked to see the non-white characters as the main characters, instead of side-kicks, but otherwise I think this is the best of what Quix has done so far and will be popular. I purchased a previous Quix series, Mack Rhino, in the easy readers but this is a more advanced chapter book and I think I'll put it in the juvenile series (beginning chapter books).
ISBN: 9781534452381; Published June 2020 by Aladdin; Borrowed from another library in my consortium; Purchased for the library
No comments:
Post a Comment