A fast-paced, funny, and satisfying space tale, with a warm family feeling.
When aliens kidnap a boy, his older brother, his grandmother, and her spaceship come to the rescue in this middle-grade SF novel.
People have been thinking that Grandma Mullin is crazy ever since, a few months ago, she claimed that aliens yanked her husband into their spaceship through a beam of light. He hasn’t been seen since. Nevertheless, while their parents take a cruise, George Mullin, 11, and his younger brother, Pete, are being sent to their grandmother’s house, flying from California to Colorado. Grandma wins over her grandsons with root beer floats, new high-tops, and July Fourth bottle rockets—and then, the aliens come back to abduct Pete. Grandma reveals that she’s not crazy; she’s an alien hunter with her own spaceship hidden in the backyard, which takes her and George to the extraterrestrials’ home, Planet Flerk. In a crash landing, Grandma breaks her leg, and George has to set out alone with nothing but a tracking device, a slingshot, and a lighter. He faces many dangers, including murderous dwarves and pirates, but gains allies, such as Rover, a talking Labrador dog/hippo; and Slim, a cabin boy aboard the pirates’ spaceship. As George performs more than one rescue, he figures out his future profession: “Kicking some alien butt” is “what we Mullins do.” Trine (The Revenge of the McNasty Brothers, 2015, etc.), a prolific author of children’s books, writes a very entertaining space adventure/coming-of-age tale. George’s road to realizing his destiny parallels his newfound appreciation of his grandparents, both former test pilots, and their daring spirits. The book also succeeds as a comic novel, with many amusing scenarios. For example, in Flerk’s rather tentative police force, one cop responds to a hovercraft theft by yelling polite requests for its return: “Do the right thing! I mean it!” Trine packs a lot of action and a few surprises into his story, keeping things effectively moving, with a pleasing conclusion that leaves open the possibility of further escapades. Koehler’s (Santa’s Dog, 2018, etc.) quirky, cool, stylish illustrations deftly match the text.
A fast-paced, funny, and satisfying space tale, with a warm family feeling.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73395-895-0
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Malamute Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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