Cottrell Boyce, of Millions (2004), mocks neurotic adults, the quinoa craze, and media fearmongering in this funny,...
Not even Rory Rooney’s mum’s book Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared can ready her son for the sandwich-squashing, kickboxing bully “Grim” Komissky.
Worse still, there’s not a word in the handbook about what to do when a student’s skin turns broccoli green on a school field trip to Wales. Rory is the puniest boy in year seven, so, sadly, he’s used to bullying. But he’s of Irish-Guyanese descent, with “dark normal” skin, and decidedly not accustomed to being green. When he finds himself in the isolation ward under scientific scrutiny in London’s Woolpit Royal Teaching Hospital, he suspects that due to his newly minted “200 percent brain” he might suddenly be a superhero like the Green Lantern, an agreeable fantasy marred only by the fact that his archenemy Grim is also green…and locked up with him. The slow-growing friendship of the “Broccoli Boys” (who repeatedly escape at night and roam the London streets in hypoallergenic pajamas to wreak havoc or right wrongs) is both hilarious and touching. The snappy dialogue, gorilla encounter, truck theft, and take-charge girl sidekick named Koko Kwok keep it hopping.
Cottrell Boyce, of Millions (2004), mocks neurotic adults, the quinoa craze, and media fearmongering in this funny, sentimental, thematic smorgasbord of a novel that serves up equal helpings of satire and compassion. (afterword) (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-240017-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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