Not quite crash-proof but a thoroughgoing delight featuring new content galore and cutting-edge visual effects.
A companion to Funke’s two-volume Mirrorworld series, driven by spectacular graphics and positively loaded with both worldbuilding detail and back stories for many of the characters and events in the books.
The wonders begin immediately after the title screen, with a mirror that “reflects” the viewer’s own face (via camera app) and ripples with repeated taps to open a 360-degree view of Albert Chanute’s Ogre Tavern. This is an atmospheric room studded with trophies that lead with further taps to eight original tales or poems and six collections of documentary material. The stories and poems range from Jacob Reckless’ first meetings with Chanute and with Fox to a gruesome yarn about a tailor who works with human skin. These are illustrated in a rich variety of styles and (optionally) read by the author. Five can also be experienced in “Spectacle” versions as a multilayer sliding panorama, a live-action video converted to shadow puppetry or in another animation technique. Juicy side features include a journal of notes on ogre types that ends abruptly with a splatter of blood and a motley set of “Child-Eating Witch Recipes” read with rather indecent relish by a cast of children. Navigation is easy thanks to a slide-in menu that offers quick trips to either the tavern or to a more conventional table of contents.
Not quite crash-proof but a thoroughgoing delight featuring new content galore and cutting-edge visual effects. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad fantasy app. 10-14)Pub Date: April 17, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mirada
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
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