A breezy mixture of low humor and high (if brief) suspense.
The arrival next door of a villain bent on destroying the world adds further worries to a neurotic lad’s already long list.
Wilf is initially inclined to discount new neighbor Alan’s self-identification as “an evil lunatic.” He is forced to change his mind after rescuing little sister Dot from being loaded into a bazooka, getting a gander at Alan’s high-tech underground lair, and hearing him trumpet a scheme to blast the world with a Powerful All-Nuclear Terror System (“Just wait till I unleash the true horror of my PANTS!”). Thumb firmly on the laffs button, Pritchett, a TV comedy writer, pitches her “staggerblasted” young worrier into one “kerfuffle” after another. The feckless but monomaniacal malefactor repeatedly tries to unleash widespread destruction—only to be foiled by either a slacker minion or, twice, something sticky shoved down the barrel of his Big Gun Thingy. Along with typographical high jinks, the tale features both plenty of comically melodramatic cartoon illustrations and silly drawings that Wilf makes to defuse his many anxieties. By the end, said hang-ups have lost much of their old force. Alan may be fitted with a wife and other appurtenances of adulthood, but he’s really a tantrum-prone 2-year-old, and readers will easily see through the disguise.
A breezy mixture of low humor and high (if brief) suspense. (Farce. 9-11)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62365-822-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean.
A 12-year-old copes with a brain tumor.
Maddie likes potatoes and fake mustaches. Kids at school are nice (except one whom readers will see instantly is a bully); soon they’ll get to perform Shakespeare scenes in a unit they’ve all been looking forward to. But recent dysfunctions in Maddie’s arm and leg mean, stunningly, that she has a brain tumor. She has two surgeries, the first successful, the second taking place after the book’s end, leaving readers hanging. The tumor’s not malignant, but it—or the surgeries—could cause sight loss, personality change, or death. The descriptions of surgery aren’t for the faint of heart. The authors—parents of a real-life Maddie who really had a brain tumor—imbue fictional Maddie’s first-person narration with quirky turns of phrase (“For the love of potatoes!”) and whimsy (she imagines her medical battles as epic fantasy fights and pretends MRI stands for Mustard Rat from Indiana or Mustaches Rock Importantly), but they also portray her as a model sick kid. She’s frightened but never acts out, snaps, or resists. Her most frequent commentary about the tumor, having her skull opened, and the possibility of death is “Boo” or “Super boo.” She even shoulders the bully’s redemption. Maddie and most characters are white; one cringe-inducing hallucinatory surgery dream involves “chanting island natives” and a “witch doctor lady.”
Medically, both squicky and hopeful; emotionally, unbelievably squeaky-clean. (authors’ note, discussion questions) (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62972-330-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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