Go for Lyn Gardner’s Into the Woods, (2007) Emily Rodda’s Key to Rondo (2008) and Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark & Grimm...
With no dearth of novels that fracture and mingle fairy tales, waste no time on this sequel and its lazy metaphysics.
Jack, of the beanstalk family, and Phillip, a prince, come from inside fairy tales; May, of unclear heritage, comes from the modern real world. They have many adventures. As they get into and out of scrapes, some magic startles them while some inexplicably doesn’t. Rather than portraying the magic with consistency or structure, the text indolently justifies itself: “[m]agic [is] strange.” Any detail can be just “[p]art o’ the magic”: When ocean replaces forest, the “because” is “Because why not.” Riley strives for twists and intrigue, but so many things appear “out of nowhere” that surprise becomes tedium. He simply hasn’t the knack yet of creating a plot in which characters are consistently confused but readers aren’t. There’s some cool stuff: Peter Pan is also Pan the satyr, and Jack’s sardonic narration is often funny. But words like “immediately” and “quickly” can’t force excitement, nor can offered-and-retracted inescapable peril (“nothing could possibly stop the sword as it flew straight and true right at Phillips' back— / Until an urgent, vibrant musical note sounded from behind”). The retrograde sexism of May’s fussy, sharp-tongued, victim role chafes.
Go for Lyn Gardner’s Into the Woods, (2007) Emily Rodda’s Key to Rondo (2008) and Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark & Grimm (2010) instead. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: April 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9596-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Epic lunacy.
Will extragalactic rats eat the moon?
Can a cybernetic toenail clipper find a worthy purpose in the vast universe? Will the first feline astronaut ever get a slice of pizza? Read on. Reworked from the Live Cartoon series of homespun video shorts released on Instagram in 2020 but retaining that “we’re making this up as we go” quality, the episodic tale begins with the electrifying discovery that our moon is being nibbled away. Off blast one strong, silent, furry hero—“Meow”—and a stowaway robot to our nearest celestial neighbor to hook up with the imperious Queen of the Moon and head toward the dark side, past challenges from pirates on the Sea of Tranquility and a sphinx with a riddle (“It weighs a ton, but floats on air. / It’s bald but has a lot of hair.” The answer? “Meow”). They endure multiple close but frustratingly glancing encounters with pizza and finally deliver the malign, multiheaded Rat King and its toothy armies to a suitable fate. Cue the massive pizza party! Aside from one pirate captain and a general back on Earth, the human and humanoid cast in Harris’ loosely drawn cartoon panels, from the appropriately moon-faced queen on, is light skinned. Merch, music, and the original episodes are available on an associated website.
Epic lunacy. (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-308408-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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