Heavy-handed on the life lessons but a refreshingly creative take on a Night-at-the-Museum theme.
Painted figures stepping out of their frames create chaos at the art museum—paralleled by conflicts among young visitors trying to restore peace.
The freehand drawings that came to life and made mischief in 2020’s series opener both help and hinder Drew and her sketchbook-toting art club as, in the wake of a repeat outing to the Art Institute of Chicago, the disappearance from a painting of an errant baby wearing a hilariously extravagant hat touches off a wholesale exodus from the rest of the collection. Worse yet, angry disagreements about how, or whether, to restore order come close to breaking up the club even as events take a scary turn when nonbinary rebel TJ casts a spell that turns an already creepy portrait of Dorian Gray into a writhing mélange of different art styles. The dialogue runs to moralistic reflections—on understanding others, what real heroes do, the importance of working together and learning from mistakes, and similar—but there’s plenty of silent action in the small (but flexibly shaped and arranged) panels as two-dimensional figures turn the museum’s walls into a battleground. Ultimately, the three-dimensional ones both bond and prevail. Along with sage observations about the rewards and value of art, Sell—without identifying the many works he freely redraws—folds in hints for interested art detectives to pursue. Drew reads White in a broadly diverse cast.
Heavy-handed on the life lessons but a refreshingly creative take on a Night-at-the-Museum theme. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984894-73-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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