A lighter-than-air tale features Max Carmody, a sixth-grader with a mania (if not, from the evidence at each chapter’s head, a talent) for standup, whose attempt to compete in a national comedy contest hits all sorts of snags. Korman surrounds his Seinfeld wannabe with semi-dysfunctional friends, and propels him through a series of efforts, first, to record a demo CD, then to find a live audience on which to practice his routine, and finally to make the audition despite parental resistance, bad weather, wrong turns and mechanical breakdown. After all that, he arrives too late to show his stuff—but his CD, recorded with a canned laugh track that turns out to be a tape of a cow giving birth, makes even the national news and earns him a triumphal gig at a local comedy club. Max’s lame or fragmentary jokes won’t come close to bringing the house down, but some of the more farcical set pieces here might, and the author artfully injects family and friendship issues that bulk the tale up without weighing it down. A rib-tickling followup performance to Sachar’s Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes (1991) or Levy’s My Life as a Fifth Grade Comedian (1997). (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7868-0746-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
A sixth-grader and an inexperienced teacher both learn something from each other in Clements’s newest teachable-moment-driven school tale. Hart Evans has always, and effortlessly, been Cool—a talent that backfires when his control-freak music teacher, Mr. Meinert, throws up his hands and leaves it to the unruly school chorus to elect its own director for the upcoming Holiday Concert. Hart surprises both Mr. Meinert and himself by rising brilliantly to the occasion. Clements stirs a few side issues into the pot—for one, Meinert and the other arts teachers are being laid off on January first—but his focus being Hart’s introduction to group dynamics and the management thereof, complications of plot or character cause only minor ripples. Having learned the value of listening, of running things democratically, and of knowing when to seek help, Hart and Meinert engineer a quirky, rousing triumph—that, no, doesn’t save Meinert’s job, but does leave everyone involved, readers included, with both good feelings and the idea that both young people and adults are sometimes guilty of underestimating each other. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-84516-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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