A weaker link in a fun series.
The smartest kid and his friends strike again.
Jake McQuade, the star of the first two books in Grabenstein’s series, is still an artificially precocious youngster whose jelly bean–enhanced smarts get him into and out of scrapes. This third installment follows the formula established in the first two: His best friends, Grace Garcia and Kojo Shelton, help him unravel a mystery; dastardly villains with alliterative names try to usurp his position; and short, snappy chapters full of short, snappy paragraphs keep the action moving apace. The story opens with pirate captain Aliento de Perro (“Dog Breath”) smuggling away a massive orange diamond known as la Gran Calabaza, the retrieval of which becomes the central adventure. Meanwhile, Jake is worried that the effect of Pakistani scientist Haazim Farooqi’s Ingestible Knowledge jelly beans is starting to wear off and that evil, wealthy, halitosis-afflicted Hubert Huxley will steal his spot when a new batch of those jelly beans turns Hubert into Captain Brainiac. The story—revolving around old and new characters and two separate jewels—is a little harder to follow than the last, and the central gimmick starts to wear thin as Hubert and Jake keep performing feats of intellect. Still, readers who are already invested in the characters will no doubt finish this one out of loyalty.
A weaker link in a fun series. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780593480915
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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