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This is not one book about a particularly unlucky immortal, but four books in a series of short, easy-read middle-grade novels about kids surviving disasters. I bought them because I needed to fill a particular ecological niche in my children's books, which was easy-read middle grade novels which 1) would appeal to boys as well as girls, 2) are not fantasy, 3) are not Hatchet or Wimpy Kid.
I read one to see what they were like and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. I ended up reading three more for sheer enjoyment and will no doubt work my way through the entire series. I'm not saying they're great literature, but they are A+ at leaning into their premises - they promise a kid surviving a disaster, and they give you a kid surviving a disaster - and they are much better than they need to be.
I particularly like how each one features both a disaster and some personal problem, and how the personal problem ties into the disaster but in a non-obvious way. My favorite in this line is that the hero flees Pompeii with his father not because of Vesuvius, but because they're runaway slaves - and then goes back to try to warn the city because his dad's former (now deceased) owner was basically an early scientist and so his dad recognized the signs of an impending eruption. But I also enjoyed the Japanese-American boy using his recently-dead father's stories from the Air Force to help hum survive the tsunami, the American Revolution kid worrying about the young woman slave and her toddler that he left behind, and the medieval peasant girl trying to retrieve her church's stolen chalice from a corrupt sheriff.
The historical details are pretty good, the action is exciting, and while the kids and the people they love the most all survive and get reasonably happy endings and there's nothing too graphic, Tarshis doesn't pull many punches within those constraints. The tsunami aftermath is pretty brutal, and she's very clear that the American Revolution meant freedom for only a very limited subset of Americans. There's an afterword to the plague book which says she got a lot of requests for it, and she thinks it's because of covid. She suggest that kids who lived though covid write about it for posterity.
I regret that the heroine is not running away from the bubonic plague while looking over her shoulder to see if it's chasing her.
I read one to see what they were like and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. I ended up reading three more for sheer enjoyment and will no doubt work my way through the entire series. I'm not saying they're great literature, but they are A+ at leaning into their premises - they promise a kid surviving a disaster, and they give you a kid surviving a disaster - and they are much better than they need to be.
I particularly like how each one features both a disaster and some personal problem, and how the personal problem ties into the disaster but in a non-obvious way. My favorite in this line is that the hero flees Pompeii with his father not because of Vesuvius, but because they're runaway slaves - and then goes back to try to warn the city because his dad's former (now deceased) owner was basically an early scientist and so his dad recognized the signs of an impending eruption. But I also enjoyed the Japanese-American boy using his recently-dead father's stories from the Air Force to help hum survive the tsunami, the American Revolution kid worrying about the young woman slave and her toddler that he left behind, and the medieval peasant girl trying to retrieve her church's stolen chalice from a corrupt sheriff.
The historical details are pretty good, the action is exciting, and while the kids and the people they love the most all survive and get reasonably happy endings and there's nothing too graphic, Tarshis doesn't pull many punches within those constraints. The tsunami aftermath is pretty brutal, and she's very clear that the American Revolution meant freedom for only a very limited subset of Americans. There's an afterword to the plague book which says she got a lot of requests for it, and she thinks it's because of covid. She suggest that kids who lived though covid write about it for posterity.
I regret that the heroine is not running away from the bubonic plague while looking over her shoulder to see if it's chasing her.
