The School for the Insanely Gifted

May 16, 2011
Eleven-year-old Daphna Whispers is a musical genius at the Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted in New York City. In preparation for the upcoming Insanity Cup competition, Daphna's best friends Harkin and Cynthia are working on a Gum-Top ("The computer that you chew") and a one-woman musical version of Macbeth, respectively. Daphna is trying to compose her masterpiece, a rhapsody, but is distracted by her mother's mysterious disappearance and a series of bizarre occurrences: a man dressed as an antelope breaks into her apartment, school founder Ignatious Blatt (a cross between Steve Jobs and Willy Wonka) is taking forever to release his new invention, and his son, Myron, is snooping around Daphna's studio. Daphna, Harkin, and Cynthia follow clues left by Daphna's mother to Africa in Harkin's Thunkmobile in search of answers. It's a fairly standard adventure about preternaturally talented kids making the most of their gifts, but Elish (13: A Novel) offers an abundance of imaginative and humorous details and a plot full of twists and turns, while Daphna's search for her mother and her passion for music keep the story grounded. Ages 8â12.

May 1, 2011

From the author of Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks (2008) comes an equally surreal cyber-caper loosely attached to an incoherent story line.

At 11 3/4, Daphna is already a talented composer, whose music transports listeners into refreshing trances—so she fits right in with the rest of her genius New York schoolmates. Harkin "Thunk" Thunkenreiser is developing a chewing-gum computer that puts the chewer online as long as the flavor lasts, and her friend Cynthia is recasting Macbeth as a one-woman musical while starring in a string of smash Broadway hits. Two months after her mother's disappearance at sea, ineffectual pursuers wearing antelope masks pursue grieving Daphna and her allies to a hidden valley on Mount Kilimanjaro, where the children find evidence that the school's great benefactor, digital entrepreneur Ignatius Blatt (think Steve Jobs with the fashion sense of Ronald McDonald) has actually stolen all the wildly popular digital gadgets he claims to have invented himself. Thanks to a spy in Daphna's circle of friends, Blatt releases contact-lens computers that give him control (through a ring on his finger) over the minds of those who wear them. The shoveled-together climax is of a piece with the rest of this overstuffed, self-conscious tale.

Confused readers will wish that the author had spent a lot more time fitting together the random and extraneous elements here. (Fantasy. 10-12)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011

Gr 4-7-Daphna Winters, 11, attends New York City's Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted, whose founder, Ignatious Peabody Blatt, is a computer genius. Her two best friends are Harkin Thunkenreiser, a boy inventor who can collapse his car into a laptop-size package, and Cynthia Trustwell, a Broadway star who dreams of performing a one-woman Macbeth. Daphna spends her time composing music and hoping for news of her mother, who vanished over the Atlantic. When a group of goons comes after her, she wonders if their presence is linked to her mother's disappearance. Daphna and her friends fly to Mt. Kilimanjaro to find her mother's college friend, Billy B. Brilliant. His connection to her and to Ignatius Blatt leads to a showdown in which the girl fights to stop Blatt from brainwashing the entire city. Elish has created a school story with genius students and a likable main character. While plot trumps character, Daphna manages to express her need for family and tie up some emotional loose ends before saving the day. This lively adventure parades enough gadgets to capture readers' imaginations. Daphna and her friends have deus ex machina down to a science as they escape one situation after another with the help of chewing gum that surfs the Internet or an apartment whose rooms collapse. Give this one to children who like modern-day superhero stories.-Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2011
Grades 4-6 It's been two months since Daphna's mother disappeared while flying a WWI biplane across the Atlantic. The only clues left behind are as mysterious as the menacing strangers who begin to follow 11-year-old Daphna (a music prodigy) and her classmates Harkin (an inventor) and Cynthia (a Broadway star). After they trace the clues to Africa and return to their beloved Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted, events quickly spiral out of control. Can Daphna save her school, her city, and the world? It's hard to say which readers will find more amazing, the feats accomplished by these young geniuses or their freedom to fly about the world unfettered by adults. Either way, they'll enjoy the amusing gadgets as much as the surprising twists, fast-paced adventure, and occasionally over-the-top story elements. Another droll romp from the author of The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks (2008).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)