Trite and plodding.
After hearing her grandfather’s stories of finding a polar bear cub while living with an Inuit family in the Canadian Arctic, a little girl dreams her own wintry adventure.
Sara’s parents have skipped the family’s annual Christmastime visit to Grandpa this year, staying at home as they await the birth of her baby brother and sending her alone. Sara loves visiting Grandpa but misses her parents, especially now that a major snowfall threatens to keep them isolated up north over the holiday. Grandpa, writing a book on Inuit folktales, entertains her with accounts of his own childhood, when he accompanied his father—then studying the Inuit people—to the Canadian Arctic, where Grandpa and Alignak, an Inuit boy, rescued a polar bear cub. Sara builds a snow bear and coaxes Grandpa into building a small igloo, where she snuggles into a sleeping bag and, listening to more stories, dreams. Originally published in 2012, the story—especially in its generic portrait of Inuit culture—feels stale, the characters bland. As recollected in Grandpa’s childhood memories and Sara’s dream, the Inuit are familiar, pre-industrial tropes—exotic sources of folktales and artifacts. (An endnote oddly describes Nunavut, Canada’s vast Inuit territory, as a “settlement.”) Vacillating between realism and fantasy, the plot never kicks into gear. Sara and Grandpa present white. Homey illustrations add warmth to an otherwise chilly read.
Trite and plodding. (author’s notes) (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68010-446-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Extraordinary introductory terror, beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts.
What terrors lurk within your mouth? Jasper Rabbit knows.
“You have stumbled your way into the unknown.” The young bunny introduced in Reynolds and Brown’s Caldecott Honor–winning picture book, Creepy Carrots (2012), takes up Rod Serling’s mantle, and the fit is perfect. Mimicking an episode of The Twilight Zone, the book follows Charlie Marmot, an average kid with a penchant for the strange and unusual. He’s pleased when his tonsils become infected; maybe once they’re out he can take them to school for show and tell! That’s when bizarre things start to happen: Noises in the night. Slimy trails on his bedroom floor. And when Charlie goes in for his surgery, he’s told that the tonsils have disappeared from his throat; clearly something sinister is afoot. Those not yet ready for Goosebumps levels of horror will find this a welcome starter pack. Reynolds has perfected the tension he employed in his Creepy Tales! series, and partner in crime Brown imbues each illustration with both humor and a delicate undercurrent of dark foreshadowing. While the fleshy pink tonsils—the sole spot of color in this black-and-white world—aren’t outrageously gross, there’s something distinctly disgusting about them. And though the book stars cute, furry woodland creatures, the spooky surprise ending is 100% otherworldly—a marvelous moment of twisted logic.
Extraordinary introductory terror, beautiful to the eye and sure to delight younger horror enthusiasts. (Early chapter book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781665961080
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
Dizzyingly silly.
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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